RoveSite Information Sheet

Eagle Rock Reservation

West Orange, NJ

FN20vt

Site Description and Notes

Geographic Coordinates

Stats

• Ground Elevation 594' ASL
• Essex County, NJ
• ARRL: NNJ Section, Hudson Division

Comments by Mark Herson, N2MH

Highlawn Pavillion is located a short distance from I-280 on the First Watchung Mountain Range. The site consists of a cliff overlooking New York City, and northeastern New Jersey. The radio view is useful for approximately 0 thru 150 degrees. The site is the parking lot of a public park of Essex County, NJ. It is also the approach for a very fancy Restaurant (The Highlawn Pavillion). The park closes at 11 pm at night.

Important Note - August, 2002

The parking lot that is most suitable for roving operations (right next to the cliff) is under construction and is closed. There is another parking lot at roughly the same elevation several hundred yards in from the cliff, but it doesn't have the same radio view as the preferred lot. It may be usable, but it won't be as good as the lot on the cliff, especially for microwaves.

Follow up Note - October, 2002

The parking lot project has finished and a new memorial to 9/11 has emerged. Part of the original parking lot has remained (and almost on the edge of the cliff). The other part of the parking lot has been turned into the memorial. A new parking area about 200 feet from the cliff has been created. Thus, the rover site is back in operation.

September, 2003

• N2MH/R visited this site for the September, 2003 contest.
• Thanks to some coastal ducting at the end of the contest, many stations to the north east were easily worked. Of note, K1WHS was worked on ABCD with very strong signals. I could not work him on E due to a defective receive section on my transverter, but amazingly, I did work W1XM in FN42 with that same transverter.
• This site plays very well for coastal ducting up through New England.
• Microwave shots up to northern New England may be impaired as the path goes through the restaurant a quarter of a mile away.

September, 2005

• As noted above, this site houses a memorial to the victims of 9/11 in New York City. Because of this, there is a memorial ceremony on 9/11 to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11. Expect this ceremony to occur in the morning. Thus, this site becomes unusable on 9/11.
• N2MH/R visited this site but didn't stay for the September, 2005 contest.

Antenna Bearings and Distances

Map courtesy of AZ_PROJ by NA3T and NV3Z. (Each ring is 50 mi or 80 km apart.)

Maps will take from 30 sec - 5 mins on an unloaded server, depending on the amount of information plotted. Microsoft IE may time out after 3 mins.

Magnetic Declination (Variation)

Magnetic Declination, sometimes called Variation (especially in the aircraft world), is the difference between True North and Magnetic North. It is expressed in the number of degrees difference between the two directions and on which side of True North you will find Magnetic North.

(Declination was calculated on the NOAA National Geophysical Data Center web page at http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomagmodels/Declination.jsp)

Distance and Bearings Table

Notes:

• All antenna bearings on this page are referenced to True North.
• (All bearings and distances were calculated using the formulas of BD.EXE, Version 2004 by W9IP and N1BWT and using the exact geographical coordinates for each location.)

The following table shows targets that are within 250 miles (400km) of this RoveSite.

Visible Landmarks

Photos

There are no photos available for this site.

Acknowledgements

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