[3830] CQWW VHF K2DRH SOAB HP

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                    CQ Worldwide VHF Contest

Call: K2DRH
Operator(s): K2DRH
Station: K2DRH

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: EN41vr IL
Operating Time (hrs): 22

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
    6:  297    86
    2:  142    46
-------------------
Total:  439   132  Total Score = 76,692

Club: Society of Midwest Contesters

Comments:

Saturday reminded me of last year’s CQWW VHF contest, but without the opening
flurry on 6M.  Nothing to do but pound out contacts as best as I could and keep
moving everyone from 6 to 2 or two to six as much as I could.  Once again your
typical VHF contest when conditions are relatively flat.  Nothing like the
wonderful prop we had two years ago. Lefty K1TOL was in most of the time on
scatter and we had a brief long Es opening to some of the Maritime grids where I
worked Dave VO1AU in GN37 for the only double hop of the contest.  It seemed
like just about everyone went to bed by 11PM.

I only made one WSJT sked before the contest and really wish I could have made
more since the rocks were really flying.  I called CQ on 50.260 and 144.140
FSK441A at night to no avail except for Jerry KC0HLN two grids over who was in
solid.  We QSYd to SSB to ragchew for a while and I went to bed relatively
early.  The bands were pretty well deserted in the morning at 6AM when I resumed
so I tried some more WSJT CQ’s.  I worked one easy QSO on 6M then QSY’d to 2M
where we easily worked again.  Got one more nibble but I somehow lost him QSYing
5 down off the 50.260 call.  Once again I later brought up the archive and saw
there was a lot of activity on the Ping Jockey page in the morning so I really
don’t understand why my CQs went mostly unanswered, I know I’m definitely easy
to hear on WSJT, especially on 6M.  The rocks are really good during this
contest and I’m surprised more folks don’t use WSJT to enhance their scores.

While I didn’t make the same mistake as last year and neglect the 2M morning
tropo for WSJT there were fewer stations to work this year.  The 2M band was up
quite a bit and I logged Steve VE3TFU in EN92 at 766 miles with S7 signals.  I
easily worked John K9JK/R in EN81, but heard precious few others.  It was so hot
out that by 8AM the enhancement was pretty much gone and I settled back into the
mind deadening Sunday routine of seemingly endless unanswered CQ’s.  While the
2M grid total was consistent with last year there were a lot less stations to
work.    

As Curt K9AKS observed in our post contest round table discussion, it was a good
thing this was a 27 hour contest instead of a 24 hour one!  6M finally opened up
to the east coast in a far ranging but wildly cyclic feeding frenzy.  It kept
moving between the New England FN grids and the Mid Atlantic FM grids with a few
South Eastern EM grids thrown in for good measure.  Never heard any EL grids. 
The constantly changing opening was very unstable and signals went up and down
rapidly with several lulls in between the flurries.  Many times I would get an
S9 call then be unable to log the QSO because they would fade out before I could
get the grid.  Holding a run frequency low in the band was definitely a
challenge but it added over 150 QSOs and dozens of new grids to the log.  

After the band closed up about 15 minutes into the final hour it was back to
slugging it out again until the end.  There just wasn’t very many guys left to
work and conditions were marginal.  I managed to get Pat W5OZI in EM00 into the
6M log on a couple of short but very loud bursts for my final multiplier.  In
the end the score was marginally higher than last year so I guess that’s
progress in the right direction anyway!


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