ARRL June VHF Contest - 2020
Call: K1TEO
Operator(s): K1TEO
Station: K1TEO
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: FN31/CT
Operating Time (hrs): 27.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 799 174
2: 217 49
222: 41 20
432: 98 32
903: 21 17
1.2: 41 16
2.3: 14 9
3.4: 9 8
5.7: 5 5
10G: 5 5
24G:
-------------------
Total: 1250 335 Total Score = 539,350
Club: North East Weak Signal Group
Comments:
All in all a fun contest with 6 having good condx and great activity and 2
meters andup having normal or below normal condx.
I think what is really positive is the level of activity on 6 meters. I believe
had I spent full time on the band I would have had well over 1000 QSO's and well
over 200 grids. Right up to the end there were so many stations I hadn't worked
on and many new grids. I operated on FT8/4 for the last 12 minutes and decoded
12 grids repeatedly I had yet to work. And I missed 10 local grids that are all
but certain likely because I didn't move the beams much and with s9+ Es stations
it's hard to hear weaker locals on tropo. Also, I spent very little time on
FT8/4 - out of 799 QSO's, 75 were on those modes. Looking at the 3830
submissions it's amazing how many relatively local stations worked 300+ QSO's on
6 that I did not work.
One thing I think is an interesting strategy question is whether I should have
spent more time on FT8 and cw in the contest. Saturday afternoon and early
evening I watched the FT8 stations scroll by and saw some decent EU dx. But they
were weak and there were not a lot of them. I spent most of the first few hours
working other bands in case 6 really opened up - for once a good decision. But I
missed quite a few grids on 6 that never were back by doing that. I did work one
LA station on 6 during that time and PZ who were the only DX stations of the
weekend.
Around 8PM local time, while running upper bands, I noticed the stations in the
Midwest get much stronger on FT8. I figured I should try 6M ssb and sure enough
went down there and found K9CT who was well over s9. I gave a CQ and worked a
few strong MW stations but at a relatively slow rate. After about 15 minutes of
that it was like someone turned on the lights and it was off to the races. When
I worked K9CT I had just over 200 Q's in the log. A little over 2 hours later I
had more than double that. And I was thrilled to see that not everyone was on
FT8 - The band was chock full of SSB and CW stations!! It stayed that way the
rest of the weekend - any time 6 was open there was plenty to work on SSB.
The strategy issue is that I missed a lot of double hop by not working much cw
or FT8. I know Sunday night in particular the band was open to CA and I never
worked one though I heard quite a few. I worked some in AZ, NM and Nevada on SSB
though. Let's hope the band is open in the CQWW where I don't have to run to so
many other bands and can spend more time hunting grids on 6 using multiple
modes. But no complaints the great rates were a lot of fun too.
During the spring sprints signals on all bands were much weaker than normal. I
chalked it up to condx but now I' starting to wonder. I missed many usually easy
to work Q's especially on 903 and up. And while some of that was because of
fewer rovers and mutiops a number were stations I tried - sometimes multiple
times - and just could not complete. Hopefully it's not the station....
I ran into 2 issues in the contest. Early on I wanted to work a station in a
rare grid on 2M FT8. I noticed nothing was decoding and the rigblaster seemed
not to be working. I checked everything out and finally found the usb plug into
the computer was not fully plugged in. Strange stuff happens during contests -
that plug had been in with no issue for several years. Glad it was such a tiny
issue but it sure put a scare in me that I was off 144 and 432 ft8.
Saturday night I noticed my 222 rx was down. I was still able to work guys so I
just continued as is. Sunday am on my first 222 attempt I couldn't hear at all.
I spent a good deal of time checking things out but could only conclude the
FT736R had an issue. I had a Ukrainian xtr I'd never used and pulled it out and
set it up. Seemed to work ok though it could only drive my amp to about 40% of
normal. A couple of hours later I went to work a station on FM on 222 and the
xvtr ran into an issue and stopped working. That was it for 222.
All in all it was a fun weekend with 6 meters hopping and amazing activity on
the band. It would have been nice to have the other bands open too. That's
happened a few times over the years. Still all was good, and with the possible
exception of a couple of hours earl Saturday evening I was always busy which was
great. Tnx for the Q's. And tnx to the rovers especially W3ICC, KF2MR, VE3OIL,
VA3ELE, N2ZBH, NN3Q, WB2SIH and N2DXT. You guys definitely are appreciated!
Jeff K1TEO
Jeff K1TEO
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