[3830] ARRL Jan VHF K2DRH Single Op-All Modes LP

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                    ARRL January VHF Contest - 2023

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

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

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
    6:  180    87
    2:  105    51
  222:   23    18
  432:   39    20
  903:    3    12
  1.2:    7    28
  2.3:           
  3.4:           
  5.7:           
  10G:           
  24G:           
-------------------
Total:  357   185  Total Score = 83,065

Club: Society of Midwest Contesters

Comments:

It was touch and go if I could even effectively compete.  My 2M transverter died
about 10 days before the contest.  Intermittent TX (think I wore out the T/R
relay but it’s hard to be sure) and I was not able to get any replacement
parts or a new transverter in time (90's vintage DEMI).  Struggled to get
another old transverter I pulled it out of the junk box working again and
succeeded, however even with a crystal oven it drifted so bad as to be unusable
after a couple of QSOs on FT8 or MSK. 

 I was pretty bummed out until I remembered something about free running xtal
oscillator xtals - that they don't like to be tuned very far off natural xtal
resonance and a 116 MHz xtal can be up to a few KHZ off.  I realized that I had
previously tried to set the osc right on.  So as a Hail Mary I experimented with
retuning the oscillator off freq and checking the results - it got better as I
got further from the exact output freq and when I finally tuned about 3KHz high
it practically locked into place. 

TX it stays steady during a 30 second key down where before it would drift 50Hz
then continue to drift until it wandered 400-500HZ over the next 10 minutes
before just as slowly rebounding back.  It drifted 10HZ in 12 hours!!! Victory! 
All I had to do was offset compensate the Flex "dial" reading and I'm
good to go!  Then I had to scramble and get all the other stuff going. 
Considering new freq locked transverters or finding a new hobby LOL.

When I saw how slow things were this time out I wondered why I’d bothered.  It
was a real slugfest for me on Saturday.  I was listening to 144200 almost all
the time and worked what I heard but heard very little there.  FT8 was slow but
steady but I really didn’t see much enhancement on 2M and above.  I was
running out of new stations to work after about 9PM. 

 Snow was on the ground and the weather was iffy so the rovers mostly stayed
home.  I did snag K9LJ/R once and followed KG9OV/R in all of his grids as well
as W9YOY/R in a few.  No rover I heard had microwaves.  Lots of 6M spotty
scatter bubbles to the NE and to FL (mostly Sunday) and worked some but most
were weak and too short duration to complete unless you really stuck with it and
rode the QSB waves (kinda like the skill it took to work Sunday morning SSB
Scatter with the East Coast big guns back in the day).  Op Skill - what a
concept!   

Meteor scatter was pretty good on 6M at night as well as in the morning and
pretty lame on 2M for the most part with a few bright spots.  I got very little
sleep this time as I woke up early just to hit the head and tuned around then
got caught up with a quite a few stations to work on 6M until the time came that
 I had few more skeds and it was too late to go back to sleep. 

It was even slower Sunday so I was able to sneak in a half hour nap after lunch.
 I saw stations in the grids around me working some Carrib and SA on 6M
(TE-F2?), but I never decoded any myself.  I just kept slugging it out until the
end reaching out on the phone and chats for as many Qs as I could get.  Top of
the last hour I went to work W9YOY rover and had no output on 2M that I chased
for 15 minutes and never did find any fault, but the problem suddenly cleared
up.  Still have no clue what it was, probably operator fatigue!  Pretty much had
run out of stations to work by that time anyway! 

73 de Bob

Contest: ARRLVHFJAN
 Band   Mode  QSOs     Pts  Grd  Pt/Q
    50  CW       2       2    1   1.0
    50  FT8    127     127   57   1.0
    50  MSK1    30      30   25   1.0
    50  USB     21      21    4   1.0
   144  CW       1       1    1   1.0
   144  FT8     68      68   32   1.0
   144  MSK1     7       7    7   1.0
   144  USB     29      29   11   1.0
   222  FM       1       2    1   2.0
   222  FT8      9      18    8   2.0
   222  Q65      1       2    1   2.0
   222  USB     12      24    8   2.0
   420  CW       2       4    2   2.0
   420  FT8     13      26    8   2.0
   420  Q65      1       2    1   2.0
   420  USB     23      46    9   2.0
   902  CW       1       4    1   4.0
   902  USB      2       8    2   4.0
  1240  CW       5      20    4   4.0
  1240  USB      2       8    2   4.0
 Total  Both   357     449  185   1.3
Score: 83,065
1 Mult = 1.9 Q's


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