[Fourlanders] W4NH June Contest Report

[Bob Lear]

A little late now, but I wrote this the week after the contest and 
forgot about it.

June 2008 VHF QSO Party - W4NH
FourLanders at Mile High Campground NC  EM85jm

Ops:  W4KXY, W4ZST, NX9O, WW8RR, NN4W, WE8W, K5AWC, W0ONR were there the 
entire time.  KI4US and N4AC came up with the convoy, but had to leave 
on Sunday.  More ops were W4SKI, WG8S and KI4WOU.  Welcome to the first 
timers joining us Skip K5AWC, Randal N4AC and Tom KI4WOU.  Trailer 
pullers were GreatWhite - NX9O, Generator - WW8RR, RR Tower Trailer 
W4KXY, KXY Tower Trailer and the golf cart - W4ZST, BlackHawk 6m Tower 
Trailer - KI4US up and N4NIA back, NN4W cargo and tower trailer - NN4W.

Visitors:  Philip ND4O from Ashville, Two ham friends of Paul's and I'm 
sorry that I can't find their calls now, Sherry (N4NIA XYL), Anna N9KHC 
(NX9O XYL) and the NX9O harmonics Claire, Duncan and Eilis.

We always say Jeff outdoes it on cooking, but it is true every time. 
Plenty of excellent food including:

Friday night:  Brats, slaw and tater salad.
Sat AM:  Scrambled eggs with ham, green peppers and onions, Hash Browns.
Sat lunch:  Sloppy Joes, Chips and Pickles
Sat night:  Ham, sweet taters, 3-bean salad.
Sunday AM: Pancakes, Sausage
Sun lunch:  Ham and Turkey sandwiches, chips Pickles
Sun night:  BBQ, Mexican coleslaw, Baked Potatoes
Mon AM:  French Toast, Bacon, Ham and Sausage.

Thanks again Jeff, it was outstanding.

The weather was excellent.  Only a small amount of rain.  None during 
set-up or take-down.  the only real problem we had was the dry dust up 
there when we were setting up.

Setting up all the tower trailers went well, even with he two new ones 
on their first trip to the mountain.  We also set up a 6m beam on an 
AZ-EL mount with a crank-up mast attached to the 'ZST 
"No-trailer-tower-mount solution" that went well.  The ops think that 
the lower take-off angle (and elevation) helped for some extra Q's in 
the skip zone.  Thanks to Sherman W4ATL for the fine analysis of the 
situation and recommendations of height for the 6m AZ-EL set-up.  WW8RR 
supplied the CC 6m 5 element beam and he and Scott worked up the mount 
for beam to the AZ-EL rotator.

All the usual stacked pairs went up well and worked fine during the 
contest.

We had very few equipment problems.  WW8RR didn't smoke any radios this 
trip.  NX9O had some probs getting 222 and antennas to his satisfaction 
and a couple of times we had computer glitches caused by 'About Time' 
still resident on a couple of machines even though we had changed to a 
different time sync program.  It appears that 'About Time' was the main 
culprit with our Networking and WriteLog problems in the past.  WL 10.67 
seemed to work flawlessly for this contest.

The only new station item this trip was the DMU and LCD display added to 
the FT2000 on the 6m station.  It was used for the spectral display with 
the LCD monitor hanging on the wall of the trailer.

I want to thank everyone for all their work in preparing and setting up. 
  Even without Ivan's usual valuable help in preparing and loading for 
the contest and with the pinched nerve in my neck, I had no problems 
getting  loaded and ready for the contest, and we had no problems on the 
mountain.  I managed to get my PT exercises in each morning and had no 
problems.  Thanks again to all for the help.  Skip K5AWC helped me the 
week before the contest lifting the 6m and 2m amps to set-up and check 
out when I had a lower back problem for a couple of days.

First timers Skip K5AWC, Randal N4AC and Tom KI4WOU had a good time and 
said they are all ready to come again.

The upper bands 222 and 432 were plagued with NO propagation for the 
entire contest and totals were not up to the usual.  2m was pretty much 
normal with a couple of quick openings popping up some grids as far as 
NM to the west.  Fortunately 6m was in great shape and Paul and Kim 
spent a lot of time and made a lot of Q's for us to help the score 
situation.  We had a total of 322,000 points and 1000 Q's with the 
following breakdown:  6m - 722 & 190, 2m - 165 & 49, 222 - 39 & 20, 432 
- 78 & 29.

This may be a record number of 6m Q's for us at MileHigh.  Brian will 
have to check the old records he has.  I expect us to be in our usual 
sixth or seventh place nationwide in limited multi-op.

When we got to the campground Glenn told us they had a small bear that 
was being a problem, but we didn't see it and there were no problems 
while we were there.  The bear trap baited with doughnuts didn't see any 
activity.

Pictures taken by K5AWC: 
http://www.wanderon.org/Fourlanders/fourlanders.html

Pictures taken by N4AC:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rdepriest/June2008VHFContest?authkey=rGHVVqQp4SY

there were other pics being taken, but these are all I've received.  I 
know that some were immediately e-mailed back to friends to show them 
what they were missing not being on the mountain with us.  If anyone has 
more, please make a post to the reflector as to where they are 
available.  Thanks.

We had our annual meeting Monday morning after breakfast with all 
officers present and a quorum of members.  The official minutes will 
have all the gory details.  All officers agreed to continue and were 
duly re-elected, as there were no other volunteers or nominations.  The 
FourLanders are solvent and the treasurers report will be included in 
the minutes.  We discussed the contest and success of the 6m AZ-EL beam, 
along with each band status and results.  We also discussed WSJT and Kos 
is spearheading the effort to learn how to use it and tell us what we 
need to do to get up and going with WSJT for future contests.

Band Captains volunteering for September were:  W4KXY 6m, NN4W 2m, NX9O 
222, WW8RR 432 and W4ZST microwave.  We plan to do full multi-op.

That's the summary report for the June contest and now it's time to 
start planning for September.  I will put another message out soon to 
get things going.

73, Bob W4ZST, FourLanders President