Caution: EXT Email
If you are roving in this weekend’s VHF contest, the Maricopa convergence (where four grids meet) is an attractive spot as you can go from one grid to another quickly. The terrain there is flat and there is good propagation to most of southern and middle Arizona.
I routinely work Phoenix, Tucson, and Prescott from There and have hit Yuma and Bullhead city as well. With all the SOTA stations out, one could spend all of Sunday morning there. Last year I had no problem working any SOTA station I heard.
The catch is that much of DM32 and DM42 are on the Ak Chin Indian Nation. They do not want operations on their land unless Tribal Council permission is granted, which, I suspect, is hard to obtain. There are spots in both grids near the convergence that are
not on the Indian Nation though. Essentially, everything south of West Peters and Nall Road is on Indian Nation land. That is indicated by the purple line on the map I have attached. If you operate south of this purple line, expect visits from Tribal Security,
Tribal Police, having to move, and a loss of operating time. North of this line is a private corporate farm and I have never had problems operating there, although it is not clear who to contact to obtain permission. Just respect the property and stay on the
roads.
I have attached a map and satellite photo for the convergence to this e-mail. On the map, the Indian Nation border is indicated by a broken purple line coincident with W Peters & Nall Road. On the satellite photo, I have indicated the grid boundary as well
as operating positions I have used in the past. They rotate crops a couple of times a year, so don’t expect the fields to look exactly like the photo.
Be aware that operating this close to the grid boundaries of the GPS accuracy. It may indicate a grid you are not in unless you give the GPS a longer than usual time to converge.
You can certainly operate from positions further away from the convergence, and that may be preferable if there are more than a couple of rovers who are out there. It will just take longer to get from one grid to another.
I am not sure if this will make it to the AZ weak signal group, so if you know someone who is roving and wants to go to the convergence, please forward these maps to them. Operating from the convergence, particularly on Sunday morning should be a good introduction
to roving. If there is more than one rover operating at the convergence, they will obviously need to spread out in frequency, so fixed operators should tune for stations off the calling frequency, which is good practice anyway.
Thanks and sorry for the bandwidth to those not interested in the VHF contest.
I hope that this is useful. - Duffey
James Duffey KK6MC
Cedar Crest NM
