Hi Dave,
We should try our direct path more often on 222 now that you have
improved the antennas and raised the power a bit. I think we may have
more instances where we can get through now. I know that WZ1V works you
all the time from the Connecticut shoreline, but getting the extra
distance to Maine is a big hurdle. You picked up maybe 3 dB with ur
improvements. That might be enough to make it past Good Buddy Ron's
QTH. Yes I was happy with my 222 score. I did not try to work a bunch
of stations. Too much work. Instead, I tried to find new grids. The only
way to increase your score and Q total now with the digi modes is to
have all the bands running at the same time and with transmitters all
running at the same time to negate the horrendous time loss of a single
FT8 type contact. It is a simple matter to work four or five guys a
minute on SSB and 2 or 3 a minute on CW if you are a good operator. At
times this was needed on 50 MHz when the band was wide open. That cannot
happen with the digi modes. Having three to five monitors looking at
different bands will cut down the waiting. It would also drive me
crazy. As far as working stations on FT8, I have two observations. 1.
I never seem to decode very weak stations. This past weekend I saw just
one signal on the monitor many times and could hear it in the cans, but
it was too weak to decode. I went in the WSJTx settings and played with
a button dealing with aggressive decoding, but I saw little change. This
weekend I did see one Ft8 signal listed as -24. Most are -19 dB at the
most. Observation #2 is I know that many signals will not decode if
there is multi path. That is very common here in Northern NE as
everybody to the South is always aimed away from us up here. I typically
see stations with four or five phantom signals plus rapidly drifting
swaths that are reflections off of aircraft. You are right that
overdriven audio will mess things up. What I see often is that shack
audio leaks into the transmitted signal. Blower noise from a strong FT8
signal raises the noise floor 5-10 dB as a result and sensitivity is
lost. You have a similar situation though without FT8, with overdriven
SSB amplifiers too, so everything is a trade off. As a result, I do not
rely on FT8 when signals are extremely weak. Q65B works a lot better for
me. I did work VA3IKE with Q65B this past weekend at 602 miles and he
was running 25 watts. I have never worked him on FT8. We have connected
a few times with Q65.
On the weekend, I turned off the diesel generator a few times during the
day and went outside to work on tower sections and clean up the hilltop.
Every hour or so I would stop by the shack and look at what was on the
EME page. I have a small solar power system of about 1400 watts with 500
AH of lithium batteries. It will run the shack as long as I turn off the
8877 and 8938 triode amps. They are power hungry. That practice was how
I found W6TCP, W7TZ, and NH6Y. Incidentally NH6Y did some work to his
antenna and remounted the 222 yagis. He should be on more now that the
yagis are back up again.
It looks like you are a bit far from the some of the activity centers,
but I am worse off. The good news is that you are much farther West
than I am. Ohio near Columbus is well over 600 miles for me. (304 miles
for you) Your mileages below are in parentheses. Toronto is about 450
miles for me. (445) Detroit is 615 miles (430) Norfolk, VA 530 miles.
(120) Columbus OH 650 (327), Indianapolis 825. (420) AJ6T near
Nashville is 987 miles (497) New York 245 miles (340) Hartford 150
miles (420). Boston is about 90 miles (521) Philadelphia 350 miles
(250) Cleveland Ohio 560 miles (326) Pittsburgh 510 miles (240).
Atlanta, GA 981 miles (416) Savannah, GA. 952 miles (394) so I am
close to Boston, Hartford and NYC. You are closer to Philadalphia, Wash
DC. , and Ohio and just about everywhere else. I seem to have much
activity in New England, while much NYC activity has dropped as cities
get more crowded. I did see though that my most popular grid in the
contest was FN20. What really kills me up here is that there is no one
to my Northeast at all on VHF. K1DY is the only one in FN54 and is not
on much. N1BUG is the only ham in FN55 and he is almost never on. In the
past when we ran a multi op station, we sent rovers to cover all those
grids. Some of the spots we used included all of New England and parts
of NB and Nova Scotia. There are 17 or more grids there that are easily
worked. Without grids to the NE, we were never competitive. Normally I
used to work up to FN95 when there were a few VEs on. . This summer I
worked St Paul Island CY9C in GN01 on 432 with S9 signals at mid day.
They are 587 miles or about the same distance between me and Farmville,
VA. They put the video of the 432 QSO up on the CY9C website see below.
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipP4tV7Sql9titiwjtkQbKXmshP14UQgfDWgqd5MfGHMWJodCObhhMnOrVFIuxGAFQ/photo/AF1QipPdaqsI7R4F87HQ3VAyVT0IVHhClHZoJb1VUtAk?key=M2M3S3c1UEo4eHl0ZG1QRW8xc180SGx5aDJCdm13
They were using a 432 EME system and some power with two yagis, so I
figured it was worth a try going direct. Anyway, there are a lot of
empty grids to my northeast. You are right. Sometimes it is hard to get
people to aim your way.
73
Dave K1WHS
On 9/15/2025 7:15 PM, K3SK@buckwalter.co wrote:
Dave,
All in all it looks like you did pretty well. When I checked the HB9Q 222 chat page I
couldn't believe I missed all the western and the HI stations. It really bummed me to
see they "had been" logged into the page. I could have used the multipliers.
As far as not being answered by loud digital stations, I also experienced quite a bit of
it also. I had more than a few instances of +level signal levels that I could not get to
respond. I think it’s a combination of things like poor receiver specs, not
rotating thier antenna and adjacent RX signal interference on their end. I saw many
instances of signals piled on top of each other making them all near impossible to decode.
To avoid that happening to me I make a point to change my TX df often. And, along the
lines of stations piled up on the same df, there are more than a few who over drive their
audio and splatter the waterfall with interference making decoded difficult. There is a
(to remain unnamed) ham 200 miles south of me that almost every contest severely
overdrives his FT8 audio on 222 & 432 to a point that I cannot decode anyone within
400 to 500hz of his signal on the waterfall. When I turn down the gain to minimize the
issue, it also minimizes reception of everyone else. Pointing this out to him has not
helped. I've even sent him screen captures.
I wish I could log even half your 222 & 432 stations. I'm pretty sure I could
if they pointed their antennas my way.
Dave - K3SK
"Regardless of what you've read on the internet, FM07 is not an RF Free Zone.
Point this way and check it out."
-----Original Message-----
From: VHFcontesting <vhfcontesting-bounces+k3sk=buckwalter.co@contesting.com>
On Behalf Of Dave Olean
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2025 5:22 PM
To: newsvhf@mailman.qth.net; VHF Contesting <VHFcontesting@Contesting.com>
Subject: [VHFcontesting] The September Contest summary k1WHS
Hello VHF ops and VHF phreaques,
I saw a few interesting things over the contest weekend. One look at the
Hepburn map showed that propagation would be very marginal, and that turned out
to be very true. I heard lots of complaints. It was sobering with no
propagation lift to help. I noted that being on only 222 and
432 poses a few problems for running the bands. I can't pick up stations on 50 or 144 and then
"run the bands". Yes it is my own fault, but I am still clearing wreckage from the
last 144 antenna farm. Waiting on 222 or 432 and trying to catch people 'passing
through" is almost impossible. I called AF1T at several times but never could get him to
notice as he was gone the millisecond after completing his contact and moving to the next
band. The fact that he was 59+20 did not help me.
Stations that are S4 or S5 are impossible with these circumstances. They do not
listen nor hear me and are gone to some other band. That leaves sitting at the
computer and watching chat pages to dredge up contacts. I did try calling CQ on
SSB and a bit on CW, but that was very unproductive. I really have no idea how
to operate the contest and still have fun. I love analog contacts but the
numbers are decreasing. The big guns now have four or five bands operating
simultaneously on FT8 even if they are single ops. This maximizes FT8 contacts
as the exchange is slower than molasses in January, so having four or five band
signals at once can speed things up quite a bit. I went snooping around the
chat pages looking for stations to try with. It is very slow and hit or miss,
but that was the only routine that seems to work. CQing sure does not work on
222 or 432. I remember 20 years ago we had a multi op station and actually
called CQ on 1296 and it was productive. Things are sure different today.
I missed many contacts with a few rovers as they would never respond to my
requests for a sked. I think the problem is that they are very busy pointing
their antennas to the populated areas and have their hands full with action
there, so do not turn their beams elsewhere and cut their score. Pointing to
the populated areas will increase your score much faster than trying to work
someone 180 degrees away. I missed several grids because of that. Some rovers
were easy to find and responsive. I want to single out VA3TEC/R. I am not sure
what Mike was doing there with his rover-mobile, but he was exceptionally loud
on the two bands that I worked him. I caught him in FN04 and FN14 on both 222
and 432. IN each case he would respond to a request for a sked even though my
beam heading was not very productive. His major action area was SOUTH I was
East! Signals on both 222 and 432 were monstrous. Congrats, Mike.
I found conditions to be flat for the most part, but i did see a few bright
spots. On Saturday evening, N3MK was blasting in from Eastern Shore of Virginia
and FM27 between 0130 and 0200 UT. He was on FT8 and was very loud. On Sunday
evening I heard a few stations calling him, but could not even detect him then.
I did try working VA3IKE on 222 MHz on Saturday evening and was surprised to
work him with Q65B digi mode. He was at -20, which is pretty good for his 25
watts. That is an insane distance of 600 miles for 25 watts on 222 MHz. I think
Ike religiously uses antenna wax on his antenna. Other observations were the
missing grids that are always bugging me. No one was worked from FN33 that
abuts my grid square. On 222 MHz I missed four grids that border my own grid.
I did manage to work the other four grid squares that border FN43.
(FN42, FN32, FN34, and FN44 I missed quite a few easily workable grids due to
lack of activity. Others went missing because I could never find the station
to even try in the first place. KE8FD and N8LRG are two that I would love to
try but never got a chance. I missed EN80 on 222 and 432. I think I had a good
chance on 222.
Now for the good news and positive results. I concentrated on working grids on
222 and had a good result picking off the grids that are extremely far away. I
worked K3SK and W7JW in FM07 and EN82 via EME on Sunday morning. Other stations
worked then via EME were W4NH EM84, K9MRI EN70, W6TCP CM83, W7TZ CM97, and NH6Y
in BL10 N4QWZ in TN was worked via meteors on Sunday evening. I was amazed
that eight stations were worked via the Moon on Sunday morning in a very short
period of time.
Every contact was quick with no problem with Faraday rotation. W8ZN in
FM09 was worked on 222 & 432 on CW. VE3ZV was worked from EN92 on SSB and CW.
These are close to 500 mile distances. I did hear a bunch of stations on DIGI mode
who could not hear me. I kept looking at the wattmeter as I figured that maybe my
PA had failed. It never did and it pumped out max power all weekend when I was on.
Still I was amazed at what I heard and could not work on the digi modes. I think
some receives could use an engineering update. I did snag KE4WMH/R on 222, who was
down in FM17 on early Sunday evening when the band was stinko. I had to call for
quite awhile to get his attention, but eventually he turned his antenna and we
completed. That was nice. I ended up with the following
score:
BAND QSO GRID
144 4 2
222 61 34
432 52 27
Due to the slow nature of the September contest these days, I was participating
with a half hearted radio effort timewise, and spent most of Saturday and
Sunday afternoon working on removing antenna tower debris from the site. My
hilltop now looks like a scrap metal yard with all the bent and broken towers.
when things seemed slow on the band, i turned off the generator and went to
work outside. I accomplished a lot and rigged things up to get the last 90 ft
of Rohn 45 out of the tree limbs. I had 90 ft of Rohn 45 up about 25 to 30 ft
in trees where it fell. As of today, I was able to lower them all to ground
level, all 90ft worth!! I used several boat winches and heavy aircraft cable.
I even hauled rocks to fill in the woods road up to the shack. So between the
manual labor and the contest, I was a busy boy.
73
Dave K1WHS
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