[450] Fwd: [VHF] Decommissioning two of my 8 band rovers...

Wed Mar 27 20:07:39 EDT 2013

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Marshall <k5qe at hughes.net>
Date: Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 6:15 PM
Subject: [VHF] Decommissioning two of my 8 band rovers...
To: VHF Reflector <vhf at w6yx.stanford.edu>

Hello everyone interested in VHF/UHF roving.  I have decided to
decommission two of my 8 band rovers.  This means that I will have a lot
of "stuff" available for those that might be interested.  I don't have a
complete list of all the transverters, amps, preamps, relays, and other
stuff at this time, but I will try to get that soon.

I want to start by offering for sale one of my TV vans that we used for
two of the K5N grid DXpeditions.  This is a TV van with the 40ft
Wil-Burt pneumatic mast, the air compressor for the mast, and a 6KW Onan
generator.  The van is a Ford F350 with the big gasoline engine.
Mileage is high, as you might expect, because the TV station did not let
these go until they were "well used". We put this vehicle into the shop
and "cleaned up, fixed up, and painted up" anything that needed repair.
The van runs very well and the Onan does too.  Currently, the Onan is
110VAC only, but can be rewired to be 240VAC if you wish.  Any competent
Onan shop can do this for you or you can try it yourself.  In any case,
there is plenty of power there.

I put new oversize Michelin truck tires on the van in 2010 and those
tires have only had about 5K miles on them since new(the two DXpeditions
below).  We have cleaned all the TV station "junk" out of the van and
built a small operating table into the cabin behind the two front
captain's chairs.  The cabin has 3 19" rack panels and a power
distribution panel.  You can put a TON of really good gear into the
racks.  What comes to mind are 4 rack panel Lunar-Link amps for 6M thru
432.  That would be a killer rover / portable station!!  We have put two
Type N bulkhead feedthroughs in the roof where the old TV microwave
cables entered.  There is also a 2M FM cable that runs to an NMO mount
and 2M FM vertical on the top of the truck.  I will let the 2M FM
antenna go with the truck(I want everyone to know how big a sacrifice
that is....HI).

On the Grid Bandits web pages(created and maintained by JD-N0IRS), there
are numerous pictures of the first K5N DXpedition trying to get to
DL88.  We could not get there, because the road in the Big Bend National
park was washed out in 3 places, so we did DL79 and DL89....but anyway
follow this link==
http://kcvhfgridbandits.com/kc_vhf_grid_bandits_042.htm.  Then on the
left hand side, click on K5N DL79/89 2010 purple button.  When that page
loads, there is a bright yellow strip on the right with picture albums.
The TV van is in many of those pictures.

In 2011, we took the TV van on the Great Winter DXpedition of 2011 to
the DL99/DM90 grid line.  If you click the blue button on the left, you
will see the web pages for that expedition.  Again, on the right is a
bright yellow strip with three photo albums of pics from that
DXpedition.  There are several pictures of the van, now sporting a 2 x
6M5X antenna with full AZ / EL(you DON'T get that).  There are good
pictures there of the inside of the van and the operating table.

Bill-N5YA milled out a special rotor fitting that mounts on the top of
the mast.  That will allow you to mount a Ham 4 or TailTwister rotor.  I
think that he also drilled it for the M2 Orion 2800 rotor, but I am not
sure about that.  The special rotor mount goes with the van.  It would
cost you a lot of $$ to get this made at some local shop.  You can see
that in some of the pictures.

A club or a rover group could make a serious rover out of this TV van.
We have proved here that elevating the antennas 40ft, makes a HUGE
difference in the number of QSOs made--especially on the higher
microwave bands.  With the pneumatic mast, you would just arrive at a
new grid, pump up the mast, run your scheds, lower the mast(try to
remember this part), and drive to the next grid. Total setup time would
be a minute or two to pump up the mast. This is the ultimate in rover
vehicles.  It would make a great Field Day setup too.

Now, what is the bad news??  I want $2500 for the TV van, with mast, air
pump, and Onan.  I am willing to make arrangements to deliver the van.
If you want to come over here and check the unit out, that will be fine
too.  We can put you up here at the K5QE contest station or the N5YA
contest station and save the motel bills.  If you want to talk about
this van, please call me and we can "cuss and discuss" it.

73 Marshall K5QE
Phone is 409-787-3830
------
Submissions:                    vhf at w6yx.stanford.edu
Subscription/removal requests:  vhf-request at w6yx.stanford.edu
Human list administrator:       vhf-approval at w6yx.stanford.edu
List rules and information:     http://www-w6yx.stanford.edu/vhf/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.vhfwiki.com/pipermail/450/attachments/20130327/324dc682/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
450 mailing list
450 at lists.vhfwiki.com
http://lists.vhfwiki.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/450