ARRL June VHF QSO Party
Call: K8CC
Operator(s): K8CC, K9TM, WX3M
Station: K8CC
Class: Limited Multi-Op HP
QTH: EN82ef
Operating Time (hrs): 29
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 302 97
2: 220 52
222: 34 24
432: 107 38
903:
1.2:
2.3:
3.4:
5.7:
10G:
24G:
-------------------
Total: 663 211 Total Score = 169,644
Club: Mad River Radio Club
Comments:
Equipment:
50 MHz IC-756, 8877@800W, 66BS@130', C7-50@40', 2 x KB6KQ loops @ 100'/88'
144 MHz FT-1000MP/DEMI xvtr, 2002A@800W, 13B2@100'
222 MHz IC-756/DEMI xvtr, 100W brick, 225WB@47'
432 MHz FT-847, 100W brick, 424B@95'
Since getting back on VHF nine months ago, we've been looking forward to this
contest. Ran out of time to get all the planned station improvements in place,
but managed for the most part to fix the broken stuff from January.
50 MHz was our biggest improvement. We still have RF getting into the logic
board in the homebrew 8877 amp which limits power output to about 800W. Biggest
surprise came from last minute project to install a pair of KB6KQ omni loops.
These little antennas are surprisingly close to the big yagis a large part of
the time. We CQ'd on these antennas a LOT. Saturday we worked lots of W5s down
towards Texas, but very few deep W4s (i.e., GA/FL) which is surprising. Sunday
we had openings out to the west, including VE4/6. The last hour brought a few
loud W7 stations and a VE7 way out on the coast.
On 144 MHz, the repaired T/R relays in the Henry 2002A worked without a glitch.
Not much enhanced propagation on this band, but coverage seemed good to the
normal limits without it. Not too many missed boxes on the grid map.
Our 222 MHz woes continued. After frying our transverter in January (the result
of a forgotten ALC cable), the new replacement board turned out to be DOA. Of
course we did not discover this until the contest started (OK, I'll take the
blame for poor preparations!). After many failed skeds on Saturday, the problem
was found (about 2 AM on Sunday) in the LO chain and a junk box MMIC was
substituted. (We knew it was fixed even before putting on the headphones
because we could see WA8RJF on the IC-756's band scope - the first 222 MHz
signal of the weekend above ESP level!) We made up some ground on this band the
second day, but a lot of grids were missed the first day. 222 MHz is a really
cool band - we wish the activity was higher.
We felt we did well on 432 MHz with such a simple setup. The FT-847 was judged
to be a superior receiver than the FT-726R it replaced.
We might try the CQ VHF Contest to get another VHF fix before September. We
have a couple of tube amps for 222 and 432 which we hope to have running by
September, along with some antenna improvements.
73,
Dave/K8CC
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