[CQ-Contest] 6 Meters and CQ WW VHF

[Barry Merrill]

Bill Simpson, N5YA, and a 60 foot rented manlift, 
removed my single element Force 12 Rotary at 55 feet
off of my second tower
 - center of the Force 12 tower was 65 feet from the center 
   of the Cal-Av 2-el 40 tower; rotating the Force 12 changed
   the SWR on the CAL-AV from 1.1 to 3.7, plus the 
   Force 12 hung over my neighbor's property when not
   lying East-West.
 - that Force 12 will be installed at the ARRL "Big Project"
   Middle School just north of me, this fall, as they are
   getting involved in traffic on 7290
and we replaced it with an M2 6M5X 5-element 6 meter beam
on 18 foot boom.

A few weeks ago, motivated by Randy, K5ZD's posting that his
40 meter beam also worked on 6, I had tried out the Cal Av
(which is at 78 feet), and compared it with my R8 Vertical,
no radials, with base at 25 feet. With locals on verticals,
the R8 was better than the 40 beam, but for anyone else
anywhere, the 40 meter beam was significantly better.

Once the 6 meter beam was up, I found that it was S9+10
when aimed at a Fort Worth station.  The Cal-AV 40 meter
beam was only S4 when aimed at the station, but signals
rose to S9 on the 40 beam when it was aimed 90 degrees 
from the station!

I had not operated 6 meters since coming to Dallas in 1976,
so I had no idea about propagation, but made a fairly serious 
effort in my first CQ WW VHF, LP, 6-Meters only, and ended
up with 202 QSOs and 74 Grids.

I had brief openings to Minnesota, New England (NH and MA
with K1DG!), one Colorado, one Phoenix, one NW Okla, five
local grids, and a couple of openings around Lake Michigan
to IL/OH/MI, but many short openings to 3 and 4 land, and
I ended up working almost every possible grid in 
KY/VA/MD/DE/TN/NC/SC/GA,AL, and FL!
But openings would be only to 2-3 adjacent grids, 2-5 QSOs
in a few minutes, and then 6 meters would go somewhere else.

The spectrum analyzer on the 756PRO was useful in finding some
stations during openings, but they usually already-worked; for 
example, I "saw" K3ZO pop up five different times across the
contest.  But the receiver noise level also rose, so monitoring
50125 with a speaker was a really pretty good alert, also.

Packet was pretty much useless, except to see that there were
some strong North-South east coast openings that did me no good!

I scanned the band frequently from 1800Z until bedtime at 0300Z,
and wondered if I was going to miss a night-time opening, and
if I should periodically get up to check out the band, so I was
extremely happy, after a full night's sleep, to overhear Tom,
WD5K, report that the band had never opened at night!

I scanned the band on and off and ended up actively "operating" 
for about 14 hours of the 27 hours of the contest; but of the
202 QSOs, 75% (154) were made in the two three-hour openings each
afternoon from 1800-2100Z, i.e., in 6 hours of operating time,
and I had 61 Qs in the best hour.

I often compared the three antenna (6M5X, Cal-Av, R8), and most
of the time I could only hear openings on the 6M5X.  Rarely was
I able to hear the station on the R8 Vertical, but half of the
time, the stations, while signficantly weaker, were still easily 
heard and worked on the Cal-Av 40, with 90-degree offset aiming.

Barry, W5GN