On January 11th 2020 the WW8TF/Rover will be on the road again for the Ohio ARES Simplex contest. Details on the contest itself can be found at it’s new website, https://ohsimplex.org .
We’re starting southwest from the Wayne/Medina/Summit county area this year, and working our way back towards Summit county. At the beginning of the contest we’ll be in the northeast corner of Morrow county, then visiting Richland, Ashland, Stark, Wayne, Medina, and Summit counties. The Morrow, Richland, and Ashland county locations are above 1400′ ASL, which should give a very good footprint for the contest.
Once again we’ll be running APRS live from the rover, and you’ll be able to follow us in real time on APRS.fi by searching for WW8TF-9. Our Twitter feed @ww8tf will also get updates as we move along the route. We will also call out progress on W8WKY 147.390 MHz and DMR Talkgroup 3139 (Ohio Statewide – available on W8WKY 442.275, WW8TF 442.375 (Rittman), W8WOO 443.175 (Wooster), KA8OAD 444.5125 (Richfield/Copley), and more).
You can download and open this Google Earth KMZ file to find our planned operating locations.
Here’s our current estimated times at each location. Note that weather and other conditions might alter our timing. Your best bet is to follow our APRS feed during the contest.
| Approximate Start Time (EST) | County |
|---|---|
| 8:15 | Richland Cracker Barrel for Breakfast |
| 10:00 | Morrow |
| 10:25 | Richland |
| 11:10 | Ashland |
| 12:30 | Stark |
| 13:00 | Wayne |
| 13:30 | Medina |
| 14:00 | Summit |
Please listen at least 5 minutes before the times above and 10 minutes after the times above as our real schedule will vary by travel time and contracts made.
We’ll try to stick to the suggested contest frequencies when possible, but if things get crowded we may need to move around to others. The suggested frequencies are:
- 6m: 52.540MHz, 52.525MHz
- 2m: 146.490 MHz, 146.460 MHz, 146.520MHz
- 70cm 446.000 MHz to 446.100 in 25 KHz steps
We’ll be documenting the event as much as we can again this year with tweets, video, sound, and of course lots and lots of contacts. We’ll catch you on the air!
