ARRL June VHF Contest - 2022
Call: N7T
Operator(s): AE0EE K0BBC
Station: N7T
Class: Multi-Op LP
QTH: DN78wo
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 262 130
2:
222:
432:
903:
1.2:
2.3:
3.4:
5.7:
10G:
24G:
-------------------
Total: 262 130 Total Score = 34,060
Club: Northern Lights Radio Society
Comments:
100 W, 3-el Buddipole Yagi up 20' at Brush Lake State Park, Montana, DN78wo.
Tent accommodations.
Although the general plan for this operation had been in progress for a few
months, most of the details came together within the two weeks before the
contest. Some of the logistics didn't get settled until about 52 hours before
contest start.
We decided to forego our usual rover operation in favor of a longer, fixed
operation from one of the most wanted Fred Fish Memorial Award grids to help a
few folks get it in the log. Instead of a three-day weekend Friday-Sunday, we
took a five-day weekend Thursday-Monday.
Our campsite in Montana had 50A electrical service, with both 110 and 240 V
outlets. Come contest time, we were ready on all modes with 100 W, 3 elements
at 20', and an Armstrong rotator. Internet connectivity was, as might be
expected for the middle of the prairie, quite sparse. We had some roaming data
access, but it was not fast and we tried not to use much. Many thanks to the
stations who helped relay our info to the various chat rooms, Discord servers,
and Slack workspaces.
Conditions were better than we generally remember in that area, and it was great
to get so many stations in the log. Being in a rare grid, we had alerted the
FFMA Rare Grids chasers to our presence, which helped keep the pileup going. We
added "N7T to SSB" and "N7T to CW" messages to our FT8
macros, so that we could help encourage folks to look for us on faster modes.
Many stations seemed to come find us on analog modes, and the spectrum display
on the radio helped us see whether there were beacons or other analog stations
being received, indicative of band opening and diminished pileup, as opposed to
a full band closure.
Sunday morning was a bit frustrating. We got on early for meteor scatter and
had some success, logging 7 contacts, each for new grids. However, being pretty
low power for meteor scatter made it a bit tough. We were generally decoding
one or more of the big guns each sequence, but occasionally it would go quiet
for a few minutes. When it did, we went to FT8 and watched as FT8 came in via
meteor pings, obviously not stable enough for us to work.
Around noon local on Sunday, propagation finally opened up to us, and we started
making progress again. As we did on Saturday, we moved to analog modes once
things really got strong on FT8 and enjoyed good rate increases for it. There
were also fewer dupes, as stations seemed to be more confident in having
completed via analog modes than via FT8.
One very convenient thing we noticed about the propagation was that over the
course of the weekend, it opened pretty well to most of the regions of the US.
The Northeast and the Atlantic coast were a bit hard to come by, but we managed
to work about 25% of the FFMA grids. At one point Sunday morning, it had been
looking doubtful that we would achieve VUCC during the weekend, but the
afternoon's openings came through with a bunch of new grids.
We pulled the plug around 5:30 PM local on Sunday, packed up, and drove in to
Williston, ND, for a hot meal (though some of the meals at the campground were
relatively warm) and to get a good night's sleep before a long drive across both
Dakotas (+/-MN) on Monday.
Many thanks to all those who chased us around the band and pulled our often-weak
signal out of the noise. It was an exciting weekend, especially when we could
move off of FT8.
73 from Bill AE0EE (writing) and Matt K0BBC
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