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<FONT size=2 face=Tahoma><B>From:</B> Marshall-K5QE [mailto:k5qe@k5qe.com]
<BR><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, March 27, 2013 5:13 PM<BR><B>To:</B>
undisclosed-recipients:<BR><B>Subject:</B> [LCC] Decommissioning two 8 band
rovers....<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV><FONT face=Arial>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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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).<BR><BR>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== <A
class=moz-txt-link-freetext
href="http://kcvhfgridbandits.com/kc_vhf_grid_bandits_042.htm">http://kcvhfgridbandits.com/kc_vhf_grid_bandits_042.htm</A>.
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. <BR><BR>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. <BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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. <BR><BR>73 Marshall K5QE<BR>Phone is
409-787-3830<BR><BR></FONT></BODY></HTML>