ARRL June VHF Contest
Call: K1TEO
Operator(s): K1TEO
Station: K1TEO
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: FN31/CT
Operating Time (hrs): 10
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 395 118
2:
222:
432:
903: 2 2
1.2:
2.3:
3.4: 1 1
5.7:
10G:
24G:
-------------------
Total: 398 121 Total Score = 49,005
Club: North East Weak Signal Group
Comments:
After a mid-May storm toppled my 89 foot tower and took out all the ant's on my
second tower I hadn't planned to operate the contest. I got a bit of the itch
and Friday I connected the coax to a fixed 6M ant I have on a third tower. That
antenna hasn't been used in a number of years. It's 5 el at about 30 feet
pointed WSW.
I operated the first couple of hours and didn't notice any enhancement. I did
try FT8 where I saw lots of activity but very slow rates. In the first hour I
spent 35 minutes on SSB working 41 stations and the other 25 on FT8 where I
worked 5. I had all the same experiences others mention including not using NA
contest mode and answers from stations that then disappeared. But it takes a few
sequences to confirm that and a good deal of time. Although I saw many long haul
stations on I only worked guys I likely could have easily worked on SSB in
seconds.
I was out till evening having dinner in NY with my mom and dad (W2GKO and W2GKR)
and when I returned there was a little bit of E skip to FL. Locals told me I had
missed most of it. Went to sleep early after operating 3 hours and making 125
Q's on Saturday.
Sunday am the scatter on MSK144 seemed good but I could only convince a few
stations to try. The band finally opened after lunch as I worked a few AZ
stations while strangely not hearing the first hop. The band then opened fairly
widely and the last 2 hours I operated were filled with fairly fast rates. I had
to stopped operating around 3 (team banquet) though I slipped in about 15
minutes the rest of the contest. I gather I had worked the first 2 hours of what
would turn out to be several hours of good Es here in the NE.
Needless to say it's tough to operate with a beam that doesn't rotate. I figure
I missed at least a dozen close in grids that are usually easy to work. I also
kept track of grids I never worked but heard on FT8 and that was at about 40. I
think I saw K4T at least a 100 times but could never get his attention.
On 903 I had 2 loopers and one was intact while the other had the rear half.
Figured I'd see if I could work anyone and managed a couple of locals. I didn't
dare turn the antennas as there is a lot of broken aluminum hanging down that
would likely catch the tower and get wedged. 3.4 ghz is actually mostly intact
but has other antennas hanging in the middle of the quad array. I did work
WB2JAY on LI though I was 90 degrees off of him.
I'm working on figuring out if I can get the tower back up and if I can I likely
will be on again. May be (quite) a while though.
All in all I'm glad I got on albeit with such limited ability. I had some fun
after a very difficult few weeks radio wise.
73,
Jeff K1TEO
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