[3830] ARRL Jan VHF K1TEO Single Op HP

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                    ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes

Call: K1TEO
Operator(s): K1TEO
Station: K1TEO

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: FN31/CT
Operating Time (hrs): 27

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
    6:  221    40
    2:  287    44
  222:  117    30
  432:  147    31
  903:   28    12
  1.2:   51    17
  2.3:   19    11
  3.4:   13     8
  5.7:    4     4
  10G:    4     3
  24G:           
-------------------
Total:  891   200  Total Score = 334,400

Club: North East Weak Signal Group

Comments:

As others here in the Northeast have pointed out, Saturday was a very poor day.
Condx were clearly well down, 6 & 2 had very high noise levels, and many
stations to my north in New England were off the air because of ice on the
antennas. It has snowed very hard here until about 10 minutes before the start
- snow static was s9+ - but fortunately it stopped at the right time and
whatever was on my antennas melted quickly as it was above freezing. 

In the spring of 2012 I ran into a terrible noise problem on 2 meters to my
northeast. It took several weeks to track it down but with the help of W1RT and
K1PXE I found it to be my nearby neighbor who had recently moved in. He had a
wall charger for an electric drill that was wiping out the band. Once found the
neighbor was very nice about unplugging it and all was well. Early in the
contest I noticed that I wasn't working anyone to the NE on 2M and the noise
level was s9. I assumed it was just the overall noise on the bands. As the
evening wore on I realized that it was probably the noise issue from the
neighbor. There wasn't much I could do Saturday night, but after awhile Sunday
am I realized nothing was going to be worked in that direction unless it was
solved. Since I use 2 meters to find stations it meant I wasn't working anyone
to the Northeast on all the bands. I waited until 9:30 and then put a note on
their garage (their number is unlisted and I didn't want to wake them up)
asking if they had plugged in the offending device. 10 minutes later the noise
was gone. That was a huge lift as the rates returned closer to normal and the
condx seemed to as well. 

My score and grid totals are down mainly because of lower microwave band
results. Part of the issue was that I worked a lot fewer rovers on those bands
this year. Probably a mixture of some not on this time, poor condx especially
until mid-day Sunday, and some issues especially on 903 which seemed way down.


A special thanks to the rovers that were out including KJ1K, K8GP, N2ZBH, AA1I
and VE3OIL. And to the Packrats who really make this contest for all of us in
the Northeast. 20% of my contacts were with Club members and they were an even
higher percentage of my QSO's Saturday when I had issues to the Northeast. 

73, 
Jeff


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