Same here Dave, SWR went sky high all bands,
had to throw in the towel, Better luck next time I hope.
73 Ron WZ1V
----- Original Message -----
From: David R Buckwalter via VHFcontesting <vhfcontesting@contesting.com>
To: "'VHF Contesting'" <vhfcontesting@contesting.com>
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2026 17:39:53 -0500
Subject: [VHFcontesting] Taken out of the contest by ICE.
> Mother nature?s ice, not the government organization. ??
I have been VHF contesting for over 40 years and until today I have never been
taken out of the competition during a contest by weather. For several years I
did the January VHF contest on a Pennsylvania mountain top where the cold froze
the rotors to where they wouldn't turn and I climbed the tower and knocked the
ice off with a hammer so we could keep contesting (I was young and "less smart"
back then). Today, with about 7 hours of contest remaining, the winter storm
coming up the east coast went from rain to sleet, to ice, then snow. This
pretty much killed any propagation enhancement. I also quickly found out it
instantly made my antennas inoperative, ALL OF THEM!
The first indicator was the 2m PA tripped with high SWR indicator, then almost
at the same time the 6m amp did the same. Within 15 minutes I was down on all 5
bands I was operating.
When I decided it was time to give up 3 of the 5 PAs tripped off when the TX
was keyed. Below is the measured SWR for each band. These are all normally 1.2
or better.
50 MHz 3:1
144 MHz 2.6:1
222 MHz 3.5:1
432 MHz 2.5:1
1296MHz 2.1:1
Sadly, I was on a roll to a new personal all-time January contest high score
with 275 QSOs when I was forced out of the game. The only thing positive is my
score this year is ~7k points over last January contest
Dave ? K3SK
FM07
_______________________________________________
VHFcontesting mailing list
VHFcontesting@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting
_______________________________________________
VHFcontesting mailing list
VHFcontesting@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting
|