2001 ARRL June VHF QSO Party
Contest Dates : 09-Jun-01, 10-Jun-01, 11-Jun-01
Callsign Used : W5KFT
Station Used : W5KFT
Operators : W5KFT, K5TR, WM5R, NE5RO, KD5JZV
Category : Multi-Operator Limited High Power (M/L)
Location : EM00st
Section : South Texas (STX)
Country : United States
BAND Raw QSOs Valid QSOs Points Mults
__________________________________________________
6CW 14 14 14 5
6SSB 479 479 455 152
2CW 2 2 2 1
2SSB 123 123 117 31
222SSB 28 28 56 15
432CW 3 3 6 3
432SSB 47 47 94 16
__________________________________________________
Totals 696 696 744 223
Claimed Score = 165,912 points.
--
6M was essentially dead all day Saturday. At the very beginning of the
contest, it was open to the north central US and central Canada, places
like Saskatchewan and the Dakotas and Minnesota, but it didn't last very
long. Between 1942 and 0339 we made _no_ skip QSOs on 6M. Six prime hours on
Saturday with no Eskip propagation at all killed our hopes for a big score
on that band. At 0441, George worked K1WHS in FN43, a double-skip QSO that
seemed quite out of place as the band wasn't open to anyone else in that
direction for a few more hours. The band opened very well into the northeast
and New England starting around 0700, which is unusually late. It was still
open as late as 0900.
The band was open someplace for most of the day Sunday, but we never
really hit our "bread and butter" QSO areas. In the morning, the band
was open to Michigan and Chicago and the northern portions of Ohio and
Indiana, but it never opened up to the lower portions of W8/W9, and we had
only a very few contacts in all of W4 until a late opening to Florida
that started around 2122. Our best peak 10-minute rate on the band was
132/hr right around 1244 Sunday morning. We worked some 6M DX Sunday
afternoon. Countries worked this contest included: W, VE, XE, C6, ZF,
CO, and KP4. The Caribbean countries were all worked between 2220 and 0017.
Conditions on 2M were not spectacular. The best tropo distance was
W0ETT in DM86 at ~450 miles. We also worked nearly that far into EM25
and EM35 in Oklahoma. There was no noticable tropo enhancement in any
direction. Tropical Storm Allison destroyed any chance of tropo over the
Gulf (and probably reduced the level of activity from the Houston area.)
There were only a few serious rovers, and none of them chose to visit the
west Texas grids or the grids south of San Antonio. In the last hour,
however, we experienced a brief Eskip opening that netted two contacts
in new grids: DM26 (Las Vegas, NV) and CM88 (SF Bay area, CA.) Had the
opening been to the NE instead of the west, Ken probably would have
worked more stations.
Conditions on 222 and 432 were not spectacular either. The best DX on
432 was to W0ETT in DM86 at ~450 miles. There was no tropo enhancement on
either of these bands. We made 8 and 12 fewer QSOs on 222 and 432,
respectively, than we did two years ago, but worked almost the same number of
grids. On 144, we worked 15 fewer contacts, but the same number of grids.
Tropical Storm Allison and HamCom in Dallas probably adversely affected
the number of more casual entrants from Houston and north Texas.
Overall, the station worked well. Bryan's Henry 3006 kilowatt amplifier
on 6M wouldn't play (no HV,) so we ended up using a Henry 3CX800A7 amplifier
we had to retrieve from Austin on Saturday morning. We had to turn the 6M
radio drive down to 20W, and that got us a little over 600W output. The
rotor for the higher 144 Cushcraft yagi had a sticking point in it, which was
annoying, but around 7PM or 8PM Saturday, that antenna went deaf and couldn't
hear anything, anyway. George suspects a loose connection somewhere. We
still had a lower M2 144 yagi that worked pretty well. The paddles couldn't
be made to work on the 2M radio. It turns out that the pullup voltage was
not working on that computer interface, and it was sending dih/dah over and
over. So, instead we had to use the computer keyboard for sending CW
on that band, which led to some awkward contacts. We had line noise the
entire contest, predominantly to the west, and at one point we had to deal
with ignition noise from nearby power boats.
--
Rate
HOUR 6CW 6SSB 2CW 2SSB 222SSB 432CW 432SSB TOTAL ACCUM
---- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ----- -----
18 1 19 0 15 3 0 4 42 42
19 2 10 0 6 4 0 6 28 70
20 1 5 0 11 0 0 2 19 89
21 0 5 0 5 2 0 2 14 103
22 0 2 0 5 2 0 2 11 114
23 4 3 0 2 1 0 1 11 125
0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 127
1 0 2 0 2 0 0 0 4 131
2 2 3 0 9 2 0 1 17 148
3 0 5 0 9 0 0 3 17 165
4 0 9 0 4 0 0 0 13 178
5 0 4 0 3 1 0 1 9 187
6 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 2 189
7 0 14 0 1 1 0 1 17 206
8 0 28 0 1 1 0 1 31 237
9 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 4 241
10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 241
11 0 11 0 3 0 0 0 14 255
12 0 47 0 3 0 0 1 51 306
13 0 53 0 2 0 0 0 55 361
14 0 38 0 0 0 0 0 38 399
15 0 19 0 3 1 2 0 25 424
16 0 10 0 3 1 0 2 16 440
17 0 2 1 3 1 0 0 7 447
18 0 4 0 3 1 0 4 12 459
19 0 27 1 0 1 0 0 29 488
20 0 24 0 1 0 0 0 25 513
21 2 14 0 3 0 0 3 22 535
22 0 26 0 3 1 0 1 31 566
23 1 23 0 4 2 1 2 33 599
0 0 24 0 5 1 0 3 33 632
1 0 28 0 6 1 0 5 40 672
2 0 15 0 6 1 0 2 24 696
TOTAL 14 479 2 123 28 3 47
--
QSO Distribution, All Bands
1. em10 50
2. em12 33
3. em00 28
4. en52 23
5. em13 22
6. el09 22
7. en62 16
8. dm13 16
9. el96 16
10. em01 14
11. dm04 14
12. en72 13
13. el29 12
14. en82 12
15. en61 12
16. em22 11
17. en63 11
18. en51 10
19. em02 9
20. em11 9
21. en73 9
22. el98 9
23. el19 8
24. el17 8
25. dm03 8
26. em25 7
27. em20 7
28. en53 7
29. dm25 7
30. dm14 6
31. dm26 6
32. cm98 6
33. cm87 6
34. el07 5
35. em04 5
36. dm44 5
37. fm19 5
38. en71 5
39. dm33 5
40. el87 5
...
--
The station at W5KFT (http://www.kkn.net/~w5kft/) had three operating
positions (50, 222/432, and 144), with three computers running TR LOG
networked together. The 222 and 432 station used the Array Solutions
SO2R master to switch everything between the two radios. We did not
use packet or FM-only equipment. We did not use any vertically polarized
antennas.
50 MHz: Icom IC-736
Henry 3CX800A7 Amplifier, 600W
6-element M2 yagi at 150' rotatable
Stack of Cushcraft Boomers (34' boom) 38' over 18', bottom fixed NE
5-element Cushcraft yagi at 28' fixed SE
6-element Hygain yagi at 30' fixed WNW
AKG 240 headphones with Heil HC-4 boom mic
W9XT DVK
Bencher Paddles
144 MHz: Icom IC-275H
W6PO design 8877 Amplifier, 1000W
M2 2M18XXX yagi at 60' rotatable
Cushcraft 17B2 yagi at 135' rotatable
Heil Proset (reconditioned)
K1EA DVP
Bencher Paddles
222 MHz: Kenwood TS-850SAT
Downeast Microwave 222-28 Transverter
AM-6155 8930 Amplifier, 400W
17-element yagi at 40' rotatable
Array Solutions SO2R Master (shared with 432)
Heil Proset (shared with 432)
Bencher Paddles (shared with 432)
432 MHz: Yaesu FT-736R
Arcos 2x 4CX250 Amplifier, 400W
31-element yagi at 65', rotatable
Array Solutions SO2R Master (shared with 222)
Heil Proset (shared with 222)
Bencher Paddles (shared with 222)
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kenneth E. Harker "Vox Clamantis in Deserto" kharker@cs.utexas.edu
University of Texas at Austin Amateur Radio Callsign: WM5R
Department of the Computer Sciences President, UT Amateur Radio Club
Taylor Hall TAY 2.124 Maintainer of Linux on Laptops
Austin, TX 78712-1188 USA http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/
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