[3830] ARRL June VHF K2DRH Single Op LP

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                    ARRL June VHF Contest - 2021

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

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

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
    6:  159    81
    2:   79    38
  222:   24    14
  432:   47    20
  903:   11     5
  1.2:    8     6
  2.3:    0     0
  3.4:    1     1
  5.7:           
  10G:           
  24G:           
-------------------
Total:  329   165  Total Score = 72,765

Club: Society of Midwest Contesters

Comments:

No long tales of fixing gear this year.  On Mother’s Day I hit the ground hard
after a 12ft step ladder collapsed from under me while trimming branches away
from my guy wires.  (My heart also goes out to Terry W8ZN-K8GP/R who had a bad
fall off a roof a few days later).  At 70 apparently I don’t bounce so good
anymore and wound up in the hospital/rehab/another hospital for 3 weeks with 4
cracked vertebrae, 6 broken ribs, a kidney laceration, 13 staples on my scalp
and a really bad case of opioid induced gastrointestinal problems.  

So the tale this year is of fixing me, not my station.  I got home over Memorial
Day weekend with a back brace and pretty intense sciatic nerve pain on my left
side (without strong opioid pain relief) and continued my rehab from there.  By
the time contest weekend arrived the back and ribs were OK and the nerve pain
had gotten much better but still severely limited my BIC (butt in chair) time
and the medicinal pain and muscle relief still usable for me made me need to
take frequent naps.  Not exactly ideal for a full on effort.   Hey but I’d at
least get on and have some fun.  Luckily for the most part the station
cooperated.

Saturday the contest started with a thud.  I worked as many as I could on SSB on
2M etc. before taking my first of many, many, many breaks.  No 6M conditions
drove everyone to FT8 almost immediately and I was not really up for sitting
there and staring at the screens for hours on end watching paint dry so I
started tracking the many rovers that were out and about. That kept me quite
busy for the time I was able to sit and play.  Whenever I would see analog
signals on the spectrum I’d pounce but not a lot was going on since except for
short lived bubbles Es (mostly on FT8) was practically nonexistent all day.  2M
prop seemed OK but taking the rovers up from there was a chore and not much was
really happening above 432.  My only attempt at 2304 with W9SZ/P failed with an
equipment problem on his end but we had decent signals for my only (and his
only) 3456 QSO.  Most of the rovers quit early and I had to miss a lot of
evening prime time making dinner (N2KMA was feeling poorly after taking care of
me for 2 weeks) and then taking a longer and much needed nap.   

Meteor scatter was good but there didn’t seems to be as many takers as usual
and I went to bed much earlier than usual only to wake up MUCH later than usual
and miss a lot of good morning scatter which was coming through on 6M analog as
well.  Sunday was more of the same but I was paying attention to FT8 more and
cherry picking grids when I could.  I finally got some still fairly weak Es to
the NE and Mid Atlantic that would sustain a decent 6M SSB run.  Around 0000Z I
was able to put 50 or so in the log before my nerve pain finally won out (really
tough with a foot switch) but it didn’t last very long anyway.    Back to FT8
and rover chasing to end the contest with the longest BIC of the weekend (and I
paid for it the next day when the rehab nurse came over and worked me like a
rented mule - ugh). 

All in all maybe half the actual BIC time of a normal contest due to my
condition.  Between that and really lousy prop the score really shows it.    All
in all I’m not too badly disappointed though and am kinda surprised that I’m
still a contender in the top 10 (top 5 even when I filed this on 3830).

N1MM is a real PITA for mixed mode contesting.  The link you have to establish
between the two forces every Q to be logged as FT8.  So if you then hear that
rare CQ on SSB etc. and answer it you have to completely shut down WSJT-X before
you can log it correctly as USB.  Basically that means you can’t monitor any
WSJT in the background as you run the bands with a rover or run a pileup and you
have to kill your decode list so you can’t cherry pick highlighted multipliers
on 6 while you are off running on 2m and above (rules say one signal PER BAND). 


I did find a work around.  If you run two computers you can make it work; one
with N1MM just for logging analog contacts and another computer with N1MM
logging and WSJT run on that same computer.  Both can still be linked to the
radio A/B VFOs or in the case of a Flex 6000 series to whatever slice(s) you RX
WSJT with (even if they are C,D,E etc.).

I kept a pretty good eye on what mode I was logging but a few may still have
been mislabeled by N1MM when I wasn’t paying as close attention.  Hopefully I
can be up to full speed for the July CQWW VHF and we have much better conditions
too. 

Band   Mode  QSOs     Pts  Grd  Pt/Q
    50  CW      10      10    4   1.0
    50  FT4      1       1    1   1.0
    50  FT8     46      46   21   1.0
    50  MSK1    12      12   11   1.0
    50  USB     90      90   44   1.0
   144  FT8     27      27   19   1.0
   144  MSK1     6       6    5   1.0
   144  USB     46      46   14   1.0
   222  CW       4       8    2   2.0
   222  FT8      1       2    1   2.0
   222  USB     19      38   11   2.0
   420  CW       4       8    2   2.0
   420  FT8      3       6    3   2.0
   420  USB     40      80   15   2.0
   902  CW      11      33    5   3.0
  1240  CW       4      12    3   3.0
  1240  USB      4      12    3   3.0
  3300  CW       1       4    1   4.0
 Total  Both   329     441  165   1.3


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