ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes
Call: K22DRH
Operator(s): K2DRH
Station: K2DRH
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: EN41vr IL
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 152 48
2: 163 46
222: 49 27
432: 84 33
903: 13 12
1.2: 21 17
2.3: 4 4
3.4: 3 3
5.7:
10G:
24G:
-------------------
Total: 489 190 Total Score = 146,878
Club: Society of Midwest Contesters
Comments:
Hoo boy, do I have a lot of work to do before June! I should have known that
things were just too easy when it seemed like all I had to do was climb the
tower and reinstall the 3546 preamp to be ready. It worked fine on MLK day
when I installed it in an ice fog, then was dead as a doornail (before ever
even transmitting on 3456) when I went to listen to it again Saturday morning.
Never even got a chance to test Tx since the antennas iced up Monday night in
the rain (about a 1/4 inch of radial ice) and stayed that way until just before
the contest started. Only thing I can think of is that RF from another band is
getting into the control lines. The week at work was hectic with several
problems to deal with that apparently only a Nuclear Engineer could solve, so I
was at work late almost every night with no time to work on switching the
station over to contest mode.
As it turned out, the preamp was just the beginning. Saturday morning my
venerable AEA MoseMatic MM-3 decided to give up the ghost as I was putting in
the Tx side attenuators on the transverters to reduce to SOLP power levels. I
had to rig up the IF rigâ??s internal keyer and find an old J-38 straight key
for 902 and above since that rig has none. I bumped the tower a few degrees
either way to be sure it was free of the ice, and my SWR was ALMOST down to
normal on the antennas when the contest started. Iâ??d turned West to talk to
a friend just before it started, and was horrified to find it would not turn
back East. Of course I had to climb to find out why. It was obvious when I
got there that the rebuilt gearbox motor shaft did not turn as freely as it did
right after it was rebuilt and that the steady 40 MPH wind aloft (it was
relatively calm on the ground) was providing enough extra drag on the antennas
that it completely bogged down and stalled the 1/3 HP motor! I had to
â??assistâ?? it in turning back east where most of the action is for me, and in
so doing it shorted the power FET in the control box so it was constantly ON.
Luckily N2KMA was there to shut it down before the rotor loops self destructed,
and I had another control box handy so I didnâ??t have to tear it apart.
The wind died out after an hour and the array would turn again, but it kept
going slower and slower as the contest went on. Luckily the wind stayed down
to a normal 10-15 MPH or so for the rest of the contest, and it held in there.
With the cold and rainy weather there was no way I wanted to go back up to
replace it! The fog came back and I settled in to a normal flat conditions
January pace. It wasnâ??t long before I realized that I could hear really well
on 222 but everyone told me I was weak, and I was not hearing as well as I
usually can on 902/3 but others noted that the Tx seemed to be normal strength.
SWR was 2.5:1 on 222, no doubt folding back power from a wet spot somewhere in
the coax since feedback said it would suddenly burst up in strength. Luckily I
found out that leaving the power meter in the line was enough of a load to
â??foolâ?? the brick into outputting about 50W to get me through, but not
before I shorted out the sequencer/preamp bias tee. Again luckily I had
another one to replace it! Nothing much I could do about 902/3 except listen
really hard.
Conditions were flat, flat, flat with no enhanced propagation to speak of. No
Es and nothing like the unusual tropo inversion to the east that weâ??d had
just a weekend before. It was the pretty typical for January. 432 was good
but the higher bands were a struggle made worse by the problem with 902/3 and
the dead 3456 preamp. Luckily some stations were strong enough to overcome
those obstacles for me. My arm is still sore from all that straight key
sending and I would just about wince whenever someone asked me to â??beaconâ??
to them so they could find me! I'd never sent that much CW for that long a
time as a Novice!
About an hour into my WSJT skeds it started raining really hard and didnâ??t
let up much for 3 hours. 6M did OK since signals are much stronger there, but
when we switched to 2M (the very top antennas) the +10 rain static made it all
but impossible to decode much unless I got pings through a momentary lull.
Unfortunately there were not a lot of those so we failed on 2M more often than
not. The preamp is useful on 2M for the really short underdense pings that
decode to partial messages which can be strung together to get all of the
information quicker. But when the precip static is that bad I have to shut it
down because the static levels have blown it before! I kept all my skeds
hoping it would stop, but lost out on many mults. My apologies to the other
stations but there was not much I could do about it. It doesnâ??t usually rain
like that in January and snow static is a lot less challenging!
Sunday started out slow and steady, once again with no enhancement that I could
tell. QSB was killer and it took a lot longer to work the higher bands. Bright
spots for the contest were sweeping 6 bands with W9FZ/R in all 6 grids, working
NE8I/R and a new rover KO2R/R that went to a few needed grids. Sweeping 7
bands with W9SZ on the hilltop (he didnâ??t bring 6M) was really good too! But
for the most part it was a butt in the chair slugfest made way more difficult by
the many equipment failures.
About three hours before the end of the contest I switched over to 1296 on a
band run and heard nothing! The transverter had apparently just quit. I
resurrected an old one from the basement that I hadnâ??t used in years, but I
soon realized that the keying polarity and drive levels were incompatible, and
with the way my luck was going I was afraid to blow up something else if I
tried to kludge it in. Besides, I was just too tired and disgusted by then to
really care, so I took a break to regain my composure! At that time of day
without any prop the rate is maybe 15-20 an hour anyway thanks to the football
games, so hopefully I didnâ??t miss much. Of course after that I had several
requests for 1296, so I missed a few Qs and a couple of mults. The contest
ended in the last minute with KF8QL in EN72 giving me a nice new mult on 2M,
but insufficient time to QSY to add more band mults. All in all Iâ??m happy
with the outcome, but it sure could have been a lot better.
73 de Bob
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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