[3830] ARRL Sep VHF K2DRH Single Op LP

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                    ARRL September VHF QSO Party

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

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: EN41vr IL
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
    6:  137    53
    2:  113    42
  222:   46    30
  432:   68    33
  903:   10    10
  1.2:   14    13
  2.3:    3     3
  3.4:    2     2
  5.7:           
  10G:           
  24G:           
-------------------
Total:  395   186  Total Score = 106,020

Club: Society of Midwest Contesters

Comments:

Started out pretty good Saturday with a lot of local stations to work, but it
slowed way down after the first hour.  Except for an all too brief Es opening
to FL it stayed slow for the rest of the day and most of Sunday.  On Sunday I
was lucky to work one station from FL on a fast Es bubble while calling CQ into
an otherwise dead band.  Activity picked up a little at the very end Sunday
night as did some all too brief tropo enhancements, but was still way lower
than in past years.  While not as awful as the 2012 UHF contest was here, it
was still pretty bad.

So this was just another slow contest grind with many 10 or less QSO hours. 
Seems like there’s been too many of those lately and that propagation as well
as participation has really fallen off a cliff.  The only Es opening had a
limited footprint and no real depth.  The cold front ensured that tropo was
almost non existent, similar to a January contest, but I’ve worked way more
QSO’s in January before.  The Midwest rovers stayed home in droves despite
wonderful weather.  The few rovers that were about went too far away (over 300
miles) for me to find and work often.  The one that I could track WA0VPJ/R was
very busy every time he changed grids since there was otherwise slim pickings. 
The stalwart multiband rovers with big antenna racks were all among the missing.
 None of the rovers I worked had anything above 432 (yay limited rover). 
Neither did the one or two multis within a few hundred miles (yay limited
multi).  No matter, the bands above 432 were generally uncooperative anyway and
the noise level on 902/3 from the “other occupants” is getting so bad that
what used to be easy distances are now rendered almost impossible.  

73 de Bob2


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