[amsat-bb] K6R Coundtdown

[David Swanson]

9 days from now, Wyatt, AC0RA, and myself will be getting on the boat in
Ventura, CA with our destination set on CM93. We've been training all
summer, finalizing equipment, setting skeds, and generally getting all the
loose ends tied up, and we look to be ready to go.

We have posted our Final pass schedule on the K6R QRZ page at
https://www.qrz.com/lookup/K6R - so feel free to find a pass that is to
your liking. We have tried hard to include everyone in our distance range
on at least 1 or 2 passes. Of course all passes are dependent on weather,
schedule, and other factors - and there's a very good chance we'll show up
on passes that AREN'T on our list as well.. find a window, and see if we're
around.

We're also happy to announce that Jimmy, KK6FAH will be serving as our
pilot relay station for the expedition. He's a fellow AMSAT operator, and
has a QTH right in Ventura, and we should be in local repeater range of
each other while we're on the Island. We have agreed to meet up each
evening and report our logs to him, and he will then pass our report on to
the BB. Please do not email him  with questions about busted calls or the
like, he's simply going to be passing on our reports. He's also been
awesome in helping us with some local arrangements, and we appreciate his
assistance with this project greatly.

I'd also like to make a brief request for folks to use some good
situational awareness while we're out there. We know this is a rare grid
and there's tons of interest, but remember that the birds and pass time are
a scarce resource. We're hoping with lots of scheduled passes there should
be more than enough air time to get everyone worked that wants it, but use
some common sense. If you have linear capability, find us on one of those
birds, and leave SO-50 for the FM only operators. If you're on the West
coast and can work us on a higher pass where the east coast doesn't have a
footprint, consider delaying to give them a chance. If you can handle
taking a night off from using SO-50 as your ragchew repeater in the sky,
that'd be great too... and please try to keep the dupes to a minimum - you
never know when someone is just sliding into the footprint and only has 30
seconds to make that precious QSO. Thanks in advance.

Finally, we're planning to do a very informal round table on 20 meters
Saturday night at 8:00 PDT. Clayton, W5PFG has agreed to find us a
frequency (probably the upper portion of 20m) and send out a tweet on where
we will be. We'd love to have you stop by on HF and chat about Satellite
stuff, the expedition, or "Am I in the log?" that night.

It's expedition go time. Hope to catch everyone from CM93!

73!

Dave, KG5CCI