OMARC has in the past operated as N2MO/MM in the ARRL June VHF Contest from Grid Sqaure FM-39. This operation was sponsored by the Ocean-Monmouth ARC, with the entire bill for the fuel and food picked up by then club member N2IHN ( now W2EFT ) and took place on his boat. The 2002 contest was our first ever attempt at an at sea contest effort.
The idea was to provide FM-39 to the deserving for at least 24 hours of the contest period on as many bands as possible. The operators for this effort were N2CKH (6 meters), N2IHN (2 meters) and W2YR (1.25m and 70cm).
The beautiful trawling vessel BUMPS was made available by N2IHN for this high seas adventure. To learn more about the vessel BUMPS visit: http://www.njsr.com/bumps/. The team had a great time contesting at sea, taking into account all the challenges that abounded operating from an anchored boat in the ocean. This effort resulted in a seasick N2CKH, many happy VHF contesters and a claimed N2MO/MM score of over 45k points and lots of QSL cards.
The vessel BUMPS was anchored and about 200 feet center of 39° 59.652N and 73° 59.213W off the New Jersey shoreline in view of land about the area of Normandy beach.
We plan to be active again during September ARRL VHF contest as N2MO/MM, predicated on good weather of course. We hope to have many more operators next time around to keep all the stations active 100% of the time to provide even more opportunity to work FM-39.
OMARC, Inc.
P.O. Box 267
Oakhurst, New Jersey 07755
Questions about this web site:
Steve Hajducek, N2CKH
Webmaster: n2ckh@n2ckh.com