Hello Paul,
This is very interesting! It is always interesting to hear reports from
around the country. Things can be so different depending on ur location! For
me, Saturday was the big day. Sunday was nothing but a grind with little to
show for the time spent on six meters. Art, K1BX came over to operate six
meters for the weekend. I had just put the finishing touches on the
refurbished antenna system. I had removed the old rusty tower and replaced
it with a new Rohn 45, then stuck all the existing yagis back on a few feet
higher. They all can now rotate. The tower grew from 90 to 100 ft. I had
also done some work to the amplifier, and wanted to see if he could break
it. It all worked fine BTW. Art ended up working 796 Qs and 179 grids on
six. (Raw score..not checked for goofs)
Saturday started out great. I finished work on the tower that morning,
and turned on the rig to hear a few European stations coming in. I worked a
few on CW that morning including France, Spain and Sardinia, had to quit to
get a few things done, and hoped that conditions would hold for a good day
in the US later on. It sure did, as the band was open at 1800 UT up thru
0500 UT when Art quit for some sleep. The band was REALLY hopping between
2200 and 0000 UT. His 50 MHz hourly rate was as follows:
1800 87/hr
1900 28
2000 38
2100 47
2200 139
2300 144
0000 79
0100 67
0200 45
0300 21
0400 14
0500 0! We went to sleep!!
Sunday we were back at it at 1000 UT after a 4 hour "nap". but the band
never really got going well to any area. The hourly rate never exceeded what
we did at 0400 the night before! 14 Qs per hour was the best rate on Sunday
for any hour!! There were hours with single digits. We were almost skunked
for one hour! My impression was that it was open to a small area for very
short times. Many QSOs were never completed as the band continually dropped
out! Some of the contacts were made on SSB iono scatter too. (I am sure we
had worked many areas out as well.) Saturday, on the other hand, went from
OK at the start, to great for a short period of time. Any time you are
working near 150 Qs per hour, you have admit it is good. A look at the main
grid fields will show what we did from Northern New England. Europe was in
again that Saturday afternoon, but we missed most of it. Art was too busy
looking West for grids and Qs. He did eventually work a few in Portugal, but
missed many others. I don't think we heard anything from the Caribbean.
There was no Eastward DX propagation on Sunday heard here.
Fields worked:
IM 2
GN 5
FN 31
FM 16
EM 75 !!
EL 10
EN 29
DM 11
CM 0
CN 0
DN 0
I am sorry I missed the PNW! We were skunked! Last year it seemed that
everything was in here at some point, for the CQ Contest. This year was very
spotty out past single hop range. I am not complaining, however! It was
still a very fun time on six meters. Any comparisons to last year are
unfair.
73
Dave K1WHS
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Kiesel" <k7cw@yahoo.com>
To: <vhfcontesting@contesting.com>; <pnwvhfs@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2007 3:45 PM
Subject: [VHFcontesting] CQ Test PNW Perspective
> Saturday was a general shutout for us, with the
> exception of KL7 stations (KL7NO had an exceptionally
> strong signal) in the evening and QSOs with local
> grids.
>
> Sunday was different. We got a scattering of grids in
> the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains regions. We had
> one concentrated opening to the area south of the
> Great Lakes, which was what saved the contest for us.
> The rest of the contacts were to local grids and a
> couple of meteor scatter contacts to California.
>
> Later in the Sporadic-E season, the propagation tends
> to favor higher latitude grids. The results fitted the
> mold this year, as well.
>
> Grids worked in each field:
>
> CM - 1
> CN - 12
> CO - 2
> DM - 3
> DN - 6
> EM - 2
> EN - 22
> FM - 1
> FN - 3
>
> I can hardly wait till next year.
>
> 73,
> Paul, K7CW
>
>
>
>
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