[3830] ARRL June VHF K2IW SO 3Band LP

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                    ARRL June VHF Contest - 2021

Call: K2IW
Operator(s): K2IW
Station: K2IW

Class: SO 3Band LP
QTH: FN33cc
Operating Time (hrs): 16
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
    6:  139    68
    2:   38    16
  222:    2     1
  432:           
  903:           
  1.2:           
  2.3:           
  3.4:           
  5.7:           
  10G:           
  24G:           
-------------------
Total:  179    85  Total Score = 15,385

Club: 

Comments:

Where to begin?

I recently acquired a Icom IC-9700 and wanted to go all out on this contest.
Equipment as follows:

Kenwood TS-590sg: 6m coverage
Icom IC-9700: 2m/70cm/1.2ghz coverage. Didn't use 1.2ghz
Diamond A430S10 70cm Yagi: 10 Element 70cm yagi
M2 6m Ho Loop: 6m horizontal loop antenna
Cushcraft 2m CSH-A124WB: 2m 4 element beam.

All the antennas were setup inside my apartment in my tower room. I manually
spun the beams to get new contacts on 2m. A photo of the tower:
https://i.imgur.com/6MfmTTp.jpg

Everything went right for this contest besides the lack of reliable E's. While
all day Friday I was able to make the occasional transatlantic 6m q or 6land 6m
q, Saturday and Sunday mostly offered limited domestic openings or 30-45 second
long quick openings. This made the contest very long/painful. I did managed to
get a 6m qso with Ireland on Saturday though, and I even managed to work friend
Chris K2CR on 2m ft8 as well. That has been a qso several years in the making. 

Main takeaways from this contest is with antennas. While I knew more elements
equals better recieve, I never realized that until this contest. Replacing the
M2 Ho Loop with a directional antenna will improve my performance in general.
More elements in 2m would have allowed me to work so much more than I did. A
rotor would have also been nice, way easier to track down the source of a signal
with one vs running back and forth to a different room to spin a beam.

Overall a fun contest.


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