[Fourlanders] Contest Summary

[w4zst at windstream.net]

Well, It was an interesting contest even though there were no great propagation openings for us.  I think all had a good time.

We certainly had a good participation:  Operators:  Scott NN4W, Sherman W4ATL, Tom K4TJD, Tom KI4WOU, Ron WW8RR, Ivan K4VJM, Paul W4SKI, Jim WE8W, Kos N4NIA, Brian NX9O, Bob W4ZST, Kim WG8S, Jim W4KXY and Jeff W0ONR.  

We had visitors too:  Buck KC4GCK, Russ W4YKF, Betty KG4YAG, Rob WB4GKI came by during the contest.  Bob W4DXW and Andrew KI4KLP visited before the contest to see the stations and antennas set-up.

Results:  27,262 points which is about 7K more thank last January when we placed fifth nationwide in limited multi and since we didn't hear of any great openings around the country, I expect that we should do as well or better this year.  We are going to enter again as limited as we only had four microwave Q's and we'll probably place higher in limited.

Details:  6m-145Q's/39Grids, 2m-64/19, 222-18/11, 432-26/12, 903-1/1, 1296-4/4.  No Q's on 2304 or 3456.  I did find water in the 2304 hardline today so it must have picked it up during the rain last Thursday before the contest as I was copying the beacon when I first put them up.  And I will now be checking all the 7/8 hardlines very carefully and drying them out.  Kos set up a nice 2m/440 FM station for us but I don't think it handled but one Q.  We are not in a very active area for that anyway.  Brian did a few 222FM contacts also.  6m worked about 12 grids outside the typical ground wave range and they were mostly WSJT.  Six or seven WSJT Q's were made in the wee hours of the morning that gave the most distant grids worked.  Best distance appears to be East Texas on 6m via WSJT.  Dick K5AND in EM00 heard us on CW, but couldn't get us to hear him for some reason.  Got an e-mail from him later.  The total Q count was 258.  We had right at 200 last January.  The other bands were all the typical ground wave footprint.  No openings, even briefly.    We were pleased that there was pretty good activity this year for no propagation.  Worked a number of new stations around GA for us and even got some rare grids in N. FLA that we don't usually find on.  Microwave was especially disappointing as there were not many opportunities.  We did miss making some microwave Q's but that is attributed to the pretty continuous rain we had during the contest.  Many of the usual stations were not on at all.

No one could complain about the food.  Jeff brought us Meatloaf, Baked potatoes and slaw for dinner Saturday night, Kos cooked scrambled eggs, pancakes, bacon and sausage for brunch Sunday morning and Jeff brought Lasagna, garlic bread and a nice big Italian salad for Sunday dinner.  Never hungry once again.  Plenty of beverages of choice and snacks were enjoyed by the crew and I have hauled off the two large garbage bags of evidence with no small effort!

I ended up having enough beds and space for 9 of us to spend the night Saturday night and we still had 6 staying over for Sunday night.  I cooked breakfast Monday morning for those staying.  

I can only say that it appears a good time was had by all and I think we won't have a problem doing a contest here again.  We had to start turning the AC on to in the shack to keep cool with all the radios and amps running and as many people that we had inside most of the time.  We had at least a dozen chairs I know.  It was pretty cold and miserable outside with the wind blowing and plenty of rain.

We did have a few equipment problems and we are going to do more critical checking on our feedlines from now on.  We smoked another connector on the 6m feedline and found that was the cause of some bad signal reports that we got until we found that problem.  We had water for sure in one of the 7/8 hardlines that kept 2304 off the air.  Ron had some kind of problems with 432 but got them straightened out.  We also had some unusual computer/network gremlins but worked around them.  I think there were seven computers on the network and I don't know how many were connected wireless, but we seemed to have plenty of capacity.

There will be no further comment about  'Nickie' !!!

Thanks to all for participating whether you operated, helped set-up, brought equipment, brought food and drink or just came by to cheer us on.

I should also mention that Kim WG8S drove over from Huntsville, Jim WE8W drove down from Greensboro and Paul W4SKI drove down from Waynesville NC to contest with us.  We are glad they were willing to make the longer trips to be with us and operate the contest.  Thanks guys.

That's pretty much all of I can think of to report about the contest.  
73 for now from the shack on the hill.

Bob W4ZST, the Prez