ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes
Call: K2DRH
Operator(s): K2DRH
Station: K2DRH
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: EN41 IL
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 136 53
2: 153 49
222: 48 27
432: 92 34
903: 17 14
1.2: 28 20
2.3: 5 5
3.4: 3 3
5.7:
10G:
24G:
-------------------
Total: 482 205 Total Score = 166,666
Club: Society of Midwest Contesters
Comments:
This was the coldest January VHF test I can remember, with temperatures well
into the minus digits at night and mostly single digits during the days.
Propagation indicators were dismal and the cold brought out noise sources
Iâ??ve never even heard before. The noise to the west was horrible the whole
time, sometimes over S9. I couldnâ??t hear the K3SIW beacons 100 miles way on
903 and above at all, a rare occurrence. My 2304 preamp quit working a day
before the contest in the bitter cold and unlike last Januaryâ??s insanity I
let discretion be the better part of valor and refused to climb in the 20MPH
wind to fix it. It was so cold I had to over voltage my 1296 preamp to get it
started, and my 2M preamp relays didnâ??t want to play well all of the time
either. Otherwise the equipment hung in there well.
We had three bad ice storms in Dec, but my antennas came through all OK except
that I had to climb and pop out a dozen or so crushed loops on the 902-3456
loopers from falling ice from the antennas above. Luckily it was 40+ degrees
one day after Christmas. I lost a power supply right before the contest to
stupidity (shorted an external transistor when I dropped something behind it),
but I had plenty of capacity to spare. Iâ??m still unhappy with the 222
performance, although I still have no idea why yet.
On Saturday the conditions were dismal at best. Most of the afternoon I was
barely able to work out more than 200 miles. 2M seemed especially depressed,
but so were the bands above 432. The evening got better when I hooked up
with KC VHF Grid Bandits KB9VSL and WB0NQD in EM29 and worked up to 1296.
Iâ??ve been trying with these guys for months on 1296 and we finally broke the
barrier. Had a few good 400-500 mile shots to EM56, 66, even down to EM54 and
55 around sunset, but they were short lived and didnâ??t extend above 2M. Not
many stations down that way were looking north to work unfortunately. It was a
frustrating day and the antennas were moving slow. The extreme cold really
slows them down and voltage drops when current goes way up. Moving them was
taking about 50% longer and whatever direction I was facing at the time it was
inevitable someone would call me off the back, then have trouble hearing me! I
was really depressed when I looked at the score at the end of the night, it was
way lower than normal.
WSJT was awesome! Lots of stations made skeds and we completed most of them, a
few by slightly running over into the next sked. Why some stations feel a need
to repeat the previous sequence instead of going on the next one like they are
supposed to I have no idea! One local multi had their clock time off by a good
10 seconds making randoms a lot more difficult than they had to be. And two
multis just couldnâ??t seem to hear me on 2M despite good strong signals from
them almost every sequence. K1TEO and I still do 15 sec sequences with Ver 4
of the program, but I decode in version 6. He hears me EVERY sequence despite
low power and we worked 6M in two minutes flat, about 3 minutes with QSY
instructions! We did both bands in 6 minutes! And itâ??s almost always like
that with us, under 10 minutes. Wish they all were like that! We think Joe
needs to bring back 15 sec sequences in the new version, if only just for us!
Iâ??ve tried this with a few other stations before too with great success, but
nobody else wants to run both versions now. 30 seconds wastes rox and time.
K1JT heard me every sequence with 30 sec sequences and we took 11 minutes to
work both bands. Randoms were plentiful and I got to sleep way too late.
Sunday stared out similar to Saturday with really depressed conditions but got
better as the day warmed up from minus 10 to almost plus 10! The higher bands
got better too and I found that despite the lack of mast mounted preamp I could
actually hear on 2340 despite 90â??of 1-5/8 and another 50â?? of 1/2 inch
superflex. Must be the deep freeze keeping the noise temperature down (I
know, it really doesnâ??t work that way)!
There werenâ??t many opportunities to work 2304 and 2345 since there is exactly
two stations within a 150 miles of me with the capability (one has only 3456 and
the other was not on in this contest). 903 and 1296 are almost as bad. I
wonâ??t work several adjacent grids (or often even my own) on any of these
bands unless the rovers go there. I only heard one rover within 150 miles with
2.3 and 3.4, and one other with 2304. Most of the stations available for me to
work are out 200 miles or more, even the rovers. So when I try way too hard to
work you on these two bands, now you know why!
Matter of fact I logged exactly 3 rovers the whole contest. Too darn cold to
rove! K9JK/R was in one grid only, and much lighter than usual. My hat is off
to W9FZ/R who worked me in four grids. Three of them on 7 bands and one on 6
where we only missed 2304 because his rig would not tx, probably due to the
cold. KC0IYT/R was also gracious enough to take a lot of time and wait until
conditions built up enough to work me on all 8 bands. I had only two 8 band
sweeps, and K8MD was the other one at 328 miles!
Itâ??s really hard to work with 10W on 902 and above at the distances we have
to out here in â??flyoverâ?? country and Iâ??m amazed at how some of these guys
can hear me! Now that power is a lot easier to obtain on the microwaves, that
limit needs to be increased to 100W for low power like 222 and 432. I wish a
lot more stations would get serious about these bands around here and maybe
they would if they thought they could be more successful. Problem is you also
really have to put up big antennas way high off the ground to be consistently
successful in this flat country when conditions donâ??t cooperate.
There was a spike in activity in the morning on Sunday that greatly helped. A
lot of NAQP stations came in on Sunday too. These contests should not be
scheduled for the same weekend! There were some really neat highlights, and
some good 6M scatter too. It was a slow and steady climb all day with
unspectacular but steady rates. It was nice to run into K4TO inn EM77 and work
6 bands at 400 miles. Worked a couple of stations in FM grids on CW when they
suddenly popped up weak on 6M around 2330Z. K4QI in FM06 was S2 and steady on
50.160 and it seemed like he was working all up the east coast. I noticed 2M
seemed depressed all day, but it got better in the evening when the activity
picked up noticeably and my formerly depressing score got a lot better. Sure
got busy around halftime! The noise to the west got lower but never went away.
Propagation extended briefly during the evening down to the EM grids again.
But this time we were able fill in some more bands than 2M, notably 4 bands
with N4QWZ in EM66 and KG5MD in EM36 both at around 400 miles.
Both days there seemed to be a lot of what some other stations have describes
as mini openings, long shots out to 400 even 500 miles that only stayed open
for a short time. Fading was deep and slow on the high bands and if you had
the patience to wait for it to come up again you could work. This was true of
432 which seemed to be about the best band otherwise. No patience, no QSO. I
saw this a lot in EM64 where I used to live, the fadingt slower and deeper the
higher you go in frequency, but the guys here in the Midwest apparently
arenâ??t used to it. Lost a few otherwise doable QSOs because other stations
didnâ??t understand it, and wouldnâ??t wait for it to come back up. Not sure
why they were in such a hurry, there really wasnâ??t all that much going on
anyway.
Picked up some nice mults at the end when a few skeds with stations to work the
bands we missed before due to poor conditions finally panned out. Not all of
them do, but itâ??s sometimes well worth it to make a sked to try again later
since the odds of running into another station 250 miles or more away again are
not all that good most of the time. The end of the contest always seems crazy
and this one was too. In the last 10 minutes I finally completed with N8KOL in
EN80 at 400 miles on 222, 1296 and 6M for three new mults. Worked a local
(â??onlyâ?? 120 miles) SMCer N9TF on 3 bands all in the last minute before the
bell. A tad short of previous high scores, but not a bad effort all told.
73 de Bob
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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