Hello 222 ops!
I am pretty sure everybody in the northeast is awfully wet from all of
the rain we have had from Henri plus all the other disturbances that
have been passing through of late. All of these storms have kept any
East Coast tropo from appearing. Of course, hurricanes can actually
promote exceptional conditions by drawing warm and very moist air up
into the more northern areas to mix with cool dry air. When Henri blew
in, all of the cooler dry air was off to the east so we missed any tropo
enhancement. The band is wide open out in the Atlantic however!
So Tuesday is hopefully a drying out period and a good time to exercise
your 222 MHz gear. For my part, I have finished a tower mounted preamp
system on the 222 tower, and have high hopes to swap out my old rotator
before Tuesday evening as well. (I have a derrick and pulley system
installed right now) Installing the preamp has complicated the antenna
switching methods I was using. The new preamp has its own feedline
coming down the tower, and I spent yesterday adding some relays to allow
me to continue switching to other antennas while still being able to
listen on these other antennas. I am hoping to install the new mods up
in the shack today and test it all out before Tuesday night.
Last week was very interesting with several long haul contacts on 222
MHz to KO4YC in FM17 at 821 km, WA3EOQ in FM09 at 806 km and N4SVC in
EM80 at 1797 km. The last listed contact was on meteor scatter using
MSK144 and took all of five minutes to complete. There are about as many
digital DX modes as there are 222 MHz operators, so what better way to
learn about them, than to run a sked or two using one of the Digi modes!
It is easy to coordinate on ON4KST chat page and set something up that
is a bit beyond your normal range. As local activity dies down later in
the evening, there is still plenty of time to run a sked or two. I am
hoping to make a contact using one of the Q65 modes.
So mark your calendar for Tuesday August 24. Activity starts up
whenever you show up, but 2300 UT is a time I shoot for to be active on
222.100. CU there!
73
Dave K1WHS
_______________________________________________
VHFcontesting mailing list
VHFcontesting@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting
|