[3830] ARRL June VHF K2DRH Single Op LP

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                    ARRL June VHF QSO Party

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

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: EN41 IL
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
    6:  297    83
    2:  175    57
  222:   61    37
  432:   95    40
  903:   20    15
  1.2:   29    19
  2.3:    7     6
  3.4:    5     5
  5.7:           
  10G:           
  24G:           
-------------------
Total:  689   262  Total Score = 256,498

Club: Society of Midwest Contesters

Comments:

It didn’t look good to mount a serious effort this June, but with a lot of
luck and little help from a friend it all came together the week before the
contest. An atypical late spring refueling outage at the nuke plant and
resolution of an unexpected medical issue that demanded immediate attention
left me temporarily unable to climb and service my antennas or fix my broken
rotor from the January contest. The WX was too iffy to install the new rotor
system K0XG built for me and brought over the Sunday before the contest but he
kindly brought down the old motor, cleaned and repaired it, then reinstalled
it. It moves reliably again (at least until the gearbox leaks more oil into
it). 

Mercifully the winter winds were kind to the antennas and they all seemed to
work well, however the preamp on 2304 was strangely quiet. Still not sure
exactly what’s going on, but I could hear exactly the same with or without it
switched in! Not exactly the ideal situation, but the line loss is low enough
that I could still make a few QSOs! Some needed repairs to the switches and
electronics and the station was back on the air again, hardly a day before the
contest. 

While it was naive to expect the propagation gods would smile as sweetly as
they did last year, there was no preparing for how dismal conditions were
Saturday afternoon. It reminded me of January! The sudden heat wave in the
Midwest really threw a wet blanket on things and made it very noisy to boot.
Local signals were depressed and while there were a few extended range stations
to the S and SE that could be heard on 2M, it was hard to get their attention.
Even when I did, it was not always very productive running the bands. Except
for local stations, 6M was dead as a rock all day and nothing of any note
showed up to be worked in EN41. The microwave bands were dismal and stations
that are normally quite workable were just not there. 

After the sun went down (almost 9PM here) the noise finally lifted and
propagation got much better, but strong mountaintop ducting led a few Eastern
multis to dominate the call and adjacent frequencies, making it difficult to
attract the attention of stations that hang there and don’t listen much off
the call. The enhanced conditions the mountaintop stations were enjoying
wasn’t helping other stations either, at least not until much later. Unless
conditions are phenomenal, casual Midwest contest activity pretty much dies by
the time the 10PM news comes on. 

So by the time conditions got better, the activity was down and it was already
time to do WSJT skeds. This was more frustrating than usual and my 1st 2M sked
with W2SZ suffered from a total lack of rocks for about 20 minutes before we
finally got it going. Then I had a frustrating 6M session with KM5PO whom I
heard several times every sequence but who could not seem to hear me at all,
again until 20 minutes into the sked! We finally caught fire, then worked 2M
too, barely within the allotted half hour for both bands. One multi was a no
show (I later learned due to technical issues) and I finally gave up after
ANOTHER 20 minutes. This all represented a lot of time wasted while the bands
were getting better and better and the causal ops were going to bed. 

N3EMF (at K3EAR) went quickly on 6M and their WSJT signals on 2M were almost
solid tropo! My final sked with K1TEO went like clockwork in less than 10
minutes for both bands. We still do 15 second sequences in Ver 4 so we can
really get it done quickly! In between WSJT skeds I worked several extended
range stations, some on 4 bands. I stayed up way too late trying to take
advantage of the extended conditions, but found few stations to work beyond the
mountaintop multis all clustered around the call. While I was listening for
random WSJT QSOs (not many to be had) I noted several stations were being very
sloppy with their time settings, some as much as 10 seconds off! 

Sunday morning was much the same. K8GP dominated 144.200 all night and was
still there, hammering away when I got up again at 1100Z after only 2 hours
sleep. As far as I could tell they sat there the whole time. Even hours later
when conditions were down again I still heard them in the background. Not a lot
of Midwest stations get on before about 7AM (1200Z), but I was surprised at the
lack of stations to work to the east when I finally found a clear frequency up
around 144.225 to call. I guess they were all working east too! Microwave
conditions were still down. K0AWU in EN37 and I were successful on JT65b on 6M
through 432. 

A bit after 1200Z 6M opened and for a while it seemed like FN42 was the only
grid I could work. Although it gradually broadened out there were not a lot of
different grids. This spike lasted less than an hour before it got spotty
again. When it was over, the night’s enhancement was all but gone, only to be
replaced by dull conditions similar to Saturday. At least there was some
intermittent Es to a few new grids, although it sounded like it was lot better
maybe 50-150 miles east of me. I got another nice hour long Es burst towards
FN42 again around 1700Z, then the band slipped into the afternoon doldrums. 

When the sun went down tropo conditions improved again, but 6M kept trying to
open to the west, south and into FL. It never really opened solid and the rates
were low, but it added quite a few mults to my totals. I worked KC4PX with the
weakest signals I’ve ever heard from him on 6M! I was hard pressed whether to
stay on 6 in the hope of a better opening or go to 2M and work the tropo. I
tried to do as much of both as I could while still wrapping up the last rover
grids and keeping microwave skeds from when we failed to work earlier in the
contest. For the last couple of hours my band changes look pretty
schizophrenic! Near the end I lucked into K4EJQ in EM86 on 6 through 903, but
1296 was a real heartbreaker with only partials copied.


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