About

What is a rover?

Some may ask… what the heck is a rover? To put it in a sentence, a rover is a self-contained Amateur Radio station that moves between multiple locations during a contest or to activate a sparsely populated grid. Many aspects of Amateur Radio use Maidenhead grids as part of scoring in a contest or as a basis of different awards. Rovers play a part in this because they are mobile and can quickly move to different grids in a short amount of time. For contests, this may mean operating from many different grids within the contest period. For awards, this may mean going to a grid where there is not normally any regular activity in hopes of helping others to achieve a goal of contacting stations located in many different grids.

Why do I do this?

I’ve always been interested in the VHF/UHF bands. I’ve always found it fascinating just how far you can stretch communications on frequencies that are very often thought of as only for “local” communications. What better way is there to determine just how far you can stretch it than to move the station around? Go out and setup in some new and interesting place, operate for a while, see what is or isn’t possible, and then move somewhere else and do it again. If I were to build a fixed station and only work other fixed stations, then there would be such little change to keep the interest up for me. Being able to move around creates an entirely new experience with the same set of other fixed stations with every new location I go to.

History of KG9OV/R

As at least a few friends could surely attest to, actually building a rover and getting out and doing this has been on my personal TODO list for many years. Around 2020, I finally decided to put an actual effort into making it a reality. So, I started gathering equipment to make it happen and coming up with ideas on how I wanted to mount antennas. Came up with a rough idea for an antenna mast, gathered up the pile of steel I figured it would take, and Jeff K9KLD and I started building.

Initially this revolved around my daily driver vehicle, a 2020 Jeep Cherokee. I knew I wouldn’t want to constantly fill it with equipment and have to tear it all back out after a long weekend, but it would do to see just how much I enjoyed actually playing the rover game. After the first two contests I entered as a rover in 2021 I had decided it was certainly worth continuing and started looking to see how I wanted to move on from there. A dedicated rover vehicle was a must for me. Otherwise, knowing myself, I would never keep this up if I had to spend more time installing / removing equipment than operating. Also, just having a handful of smallish radios, a few accessories, and a couple antennas that would be quick and easy to install / remove also wouldn’t be enough for me either.

After considering several different options and looking at the used market in the area for the budget I was willing to spend on this project, I settled on a plain old white cargo van. Cargo vans are pretty readily available in just about any condition and age you would want, parts are easy to find if needed, and they are pretty much a clean slate for how you want to build out the interior. Unfortunately, the time I was looking for the van that I have now was right in the middle of peak used vehicle insanity fueled by an unprecedented global pandemic. I probably paid more for it than I should have, but I wanted to continue down this crazy rabbit hole and the van was a requirement for me to do so.

Enter the 2009 GMC Savana that is now the KG9OV rover. It has some pretty significant hail damage to the exterior but is mechanically solid. I’m certain the radio waves don’t care about some dents and dings and I’m sure all the crazy antennas hanging off of it distract the general public enough that they probably don’t notice them either. As for me, it just makes it that much easier to pull out the drill to put yet another hole in it to mount a GPS on the roof, get feedlines in from the antennas on the back, or get cabling to the Starlink dish.

By some miracle, the antenna mast which Jeff and I originally built for the Jeep worked perfectly on the back of the new to me van as well. After some long days in the weeks leading up to the 2022 ARRL June VHF contest and a lot of help from Jeff K9KLD and Ron K9YY the van had been turned into a functional rover. There have been many additions and changes since then and I still have many more ideas, plans, etc. to go, but so far… it’s still fun!

See Antennas and Equipment for much more detail on those aspects of the rover.