ARRL June VHF QSO Party
Call: K1TEO
Operator(s): K1TEO
Station: K1TEO
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: CT/FN31
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 351 104
2: 280 50
222: 99 38
432: 126 39
903: 59 30
1.2: 68 31
2.3: 44 26
3.4: 28 19
5.7: 18 11
10G: 15 9
24G:
-------------------
Total: 1088 357 Total Score = 671,874
Club:
Comments:
Mixed results this time. On the plus side there was great rover activity. And,
the microwave conditions seemed decent. Did not notice any ehancement at all on
2 - 432 but at times noticed the rovers were louder on the microwaves than the
V/UHF bands. No major rig issues this time so that's a plus. Basically the
rovers made this contest a lot of fun as activity did not seem all that great.
Ny QSO totals on 2,222 and 432 were a good deal lower than normal. Likely
because most folks were on 6 Meters working E-skip.
On the down side, we had major storms throughout Saturday evening. I lucked out
in the afternoon - I was watching the storms using Rainscatter. There were
severe storms to my West, North and South throughout the afternoon. There was
just a little clear patch and I was in it. But around 7PM the storms got to my
QTH - and stayed. There was heavy rain and lot's of cloud to ground lightning.
A couple of times it seemed to move away and I'd get back on but it would
quickly return. Was off the air for a couple of hours. When the storms seemed
far enough away to get back on I found that there was s9+ QRN on both 6 and 2
meters. Interestingly I have some 6M ant's on a lower tower and they were fine.
I'm guessing my highest tower was discharging causing the problem with those
antennas. Things returned to normal about 10:30 or so. A good start was now a
large setback having missed the Saturday evening activity and several rover
stops.
The other major issue was the 6M opening. Obviously it was great for many but I
found it to be very frustrating. There were lot's of s9 signals on the band,
particularly from Florida and the Gulf coast throughout Sunday. But they were
working stations all over and clearly those in the Midwest were much louder
than those of us in the Northeast (though the stations further to my North
seemed to be doing better) . I could never get any real runs going in my tries
throughout the day. I think we were not reaching the main Es cloud. Also, there
was lot's of very sporadic Es - there would be one loud station coming in from
the midwest, they'd be worked and there would be no others. It was not a very
productive process to work stations with this type of an opening. I was really
jealous listening to the Florida stations working them one after another, hi!
One interesting thing I did note was backscatter. I could hear N1BUG in Maine
with the hollow sound of BS for several hours with the beam SW and not hearing
him at all with the antennas on him. I worked a half dozen or so stations on BS
which was interesting. I have not done much BS work on Es although during F2
season it is fairly common.
Anyway, fun as always and my thanks for the Q's and especially to all the
rovers for going out and making things fun for the rest of us. CU next time.
Jeff K1TEO
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