[3830] N5XU September VHF M/L EM10

[Kenneth E. Harker]

    1999 ARRL September VHF QSO Party

    Contest Dates : 11-Sep-99, 12-Sep-99, 13-Sep-99
    Callsign Used : N5XU
        Operators : N3TNN, KM5FA
         Category : Limited Multioperator
 Default Exchange : EM10
             Name : University of Texas Amateur Radio Club
          Address : SOC #73, 100-C West Dean Keeton St.
   City/State/Zip : Austin, TX 78712
          Country : United States
          Section : South Texas (STX)
        Team/Club : Central Texas DX and Contest Club


   BAND      QSOs     Points   Mults
 _____________________________________

   50 CW        1          1       0
   50 SSB      37         37      21
  144 CW        3          3       0
  144 SSB      58         58      19
  222 SSB      20         38      11
  432 SSB      31         62      13
 _____________________________________

 Totals      150        199      64

    Claimed Score = 12,736 points.

Equipment:

http://n5xu.ae.utexas.edu/n5xu/vhf.html

  50: Kenwood TS-600, Henry 3CX800A7, Cushcraft 50S3 @ 110'
 144: Yaesu FT-726R, Mirage 3016, Cushcraft 13B2 @ 106'
 222: Realistic HTX-100 + DEM 28-222CK, 13-element yagi @ 108'
 432: Yaesu FT-726R, Tokyo HyPower HL-60U, Directive Systems DSFO-432 @ 104'
1296: Yaesu FT-290R + UHF Units xverter, 45-element loop yagi @ 102'


    This is the first time that I recall operating a VHF contest
from N5XU and breaking 10K points without a big opening on six meters.
We were pretty close to 10K Sunday night, when we had a brief burst of
Eskip to Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina in the very last hour of
the contest that resulted 17 contacts and 12 new grid multipliers, which
pushed us over the top.  But the opening was really only two bursts of
contacts, each about ten minutes long.  Stations with better antennas
than us I'm sure could have dragged out a lot more scatter contacts between 
the two peaks of scatter of which we took advantage.

    This was also our first outing on 1296 MHz, where we did much better
than I had expected.  We made eight contacts with six different grid
squares, getting us in one weekend almost 25% of the way to VUCC on that
band.  If you were to add the 1.2 GHz contacts to our score, it would
make for more than 15K points, but it would also require us to enter in the
Unlimited Multi-operator category, one in which we likely won't be
competitive until we start adding more microwave bands.

     So, for this contest, it looks like 144 MHz was the most important
band, followed by 50 MHz, 432 MHz, 222 MHz, and 1296 MHz in that order.
This is a little unusual, as 50 MHz typically is more important than
144 MHz, but conditions locally on six meters were down from previous
contests.  Conditions on 222 and 432 MHz, though, were _great_.  We worked
more stations and multipliers on those two bands than we ever have before,
and we even worked more than the W5KFT VHF contest superstation did last year
in this contest.  Had it not been for the bursts of E skip in the last hour
of the contest, 50 MHz would have been the dropped band.  As it was, 50 MHz
was only marginally more important to our score than 432 MHz this year.
  
     Having 1.2 GHz was a lot of fun.  We made at least three contacts in the
150+ mile range, with K5IUA and K5DDD, both near Houston, and AB5SS, a
rover entrant, as he was travelling way out to our northwest.  Our closest
contact was about five miles away as N0LNO. another rover, gave us a sideband
contact from a parking lot near the intersection of I-35 and 290.  On 432,
the best DX was KC5FP in EL16, between McAllen and Brownsville, near the 
Mexican border.  We almost worked XE2OR in DL98 on 432MHz, but QRM was too 
heavy.  On 222 MHz, we worked numerous all-time-new grids, mostly thanks to 
rovers, and had a blast racking up our best numbers ever.  On 144 MHz, we did
work XE2OR in northern Mexico, K5ACR in Oklahoma, and K5EMP in Louisiana.
Unfortunately, we were unable to complete several contacts on 222 because
we don't have an amplifier, and on all of the bands because the other
station either didn't know the Morse code, or didn't have a key with which
to send it.

     I have in mind a handful of little projects to improve things slightly
before the January contest.

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kenneth E. Harker      "Vox Clamantis in Deserto"      kharker at cs.utexas.edu
University of Texas at Austin                  Amateur Radio Callsign: KM5FA
Department of the Computer Sciences         President, UT Amateur Radio Club
Taylor Hall TAY 2.124               Maintainer of the Linux Laptop Home Page
Austin, TX 78712-1188 USA            http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/
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