[3830] ARRL Sep VHF KO9A SO 3Band LP

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ARRL September VHF Contest

Call: KO9A
Operator(s): KO9A
Station: KO9A

Class: SO 3Band LP
QTH: IL
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
    6:   74    38
    2:   51    21
  222:           
  432:   26     9
  903:           
  1.2:           
  2.3:           
  3.4:           
  5.7:           
  10G:           
  24G:           
-------------------
Total:  151    68  Total Score = 12,036

Club: Society of Midwest Contesters

Comments:

This contest was an awesome way to finish out a great week!
Monday - Labor Day
Tuesday - Fantasy Football Draft (Yes, I'm into multiple dorky endeavors :) )
Wednesday - Brother flew in to town
Thursday - Fantasy Football Draft
Friday - Golf outing (with great weather...in Chicago...in September)
Saturday - Brother flew out, and of course the contest.
Not sure I believe in karma however the following week has been a nightmare,
sorry about the late posting here.  Will end up missing W9DXCC this year which
is a bummer.

Conditions seemed ordinary at the start but a good amount of local activity was
there in addition to both K9JK/R and W9SNR/R being on from or near the start.
Always great to have these two roaming the local area as it definitely seems
like it encourages stations further out to beam this way more regularly. 

Started banging away at FT8 once the SSB work dried up Saturday afternoon. 
Added KX8D in the afternoon on 6m...not a gimme from my station and likely not
possible on any other mode outside of JT65.  Hope he get active in future
'tests, that is a rarely worked grid from here.

Made my first meteor scatter QSO of the contest around 2245Z...meteor
conditions seemed as good or better than last September.  Had better luck on 2m
meteors this year than last.

Nice Tropo opening during the last few hours of the contest!  My station is
puny but was still able to work W3SO on 2m easily.  This is special for me as I
was born and raised in FN00 so it's nice to work the birth grid.  W3SO was
louder than virtually all local stations for ~2-3 hour span.  Also got EN92 and
FN02 into the log.  Heard but couldn't work K1RZ.  He wasn't strong but stable
519-529.

The opening seemed good but unfortunately not many stations appeared to be
looking west.  I'm guessing given the conditions over the weekend + NFL, many
ops had powered down their radios after dinner on Sunday...bummer.  Despite
that, still very fun to work good distance on 2m and add to the grid total.

Digital Impressions:

FT8 - The chaos between normal mode and contest mode was apparent.  I probably
lost 5-10 QSOs since fleeting conditions and swapping modes wasted a cycle or
two that could've been used to complete.  Hopefully a common mode gets
implemented soon so there is no issue here.  One of the advantages of FT8 is
that you can easily work casual non-contest ops.  Some of that advantage was
lost this year.  On the meteor front, I noticed a lot less "one decode
wonders" and less meteor pings on FT8 but many were still there. 
Hopefully ops are learning that QSOs can be made much easier via MSK144 than
FT8 when meteors are there.

MSK144 - Bread and butter for this contest again.  Probably responsible for at
least 30 or more of my grids.  Good activity on MSK144 and ping jockey starting
Saturday afternoon all the way through the end of the contest.  I was very
hesitant to try evil digital modes almost a decade ago now, but glad I gave it
a chance.  If you haven't played with WSJT or this mode specifically yet you
are doing yourself a disservice...it is extremely fun and can enhance your
score bigtime.  My thanks go out to W9RM who prodded me years ago and provided
the tips required to get me up and running quickly on this mode (back in FSK441
days).

Thanks for the QSOs & fun, see you in Jan!

73

Jim KO9A


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