[Fourlanders] CQWW VHF Contest Report - W4NH

[Bob Lear]

The Fourlanders operated the 2011 CQWW VHF Contest from the QTH of W4ZST 
and once again had a great time and a good contest.

We ended up with 43,648 points operating on 6 and 2 meter for the 
contest.  This was almost as high as last year.  On 6m we had 286 Q's 
and 107 grids.  Two meters had 33 Q's and 17 grids.  Pretty much like 
the June contest, when 6m is open, 2m suffers.

Jim W4KXY was the 6m band captain, equipped with his FT-2000 for the 
radio, W4ZST's 6m Commander amp to tickle the ether and the usual 
stacked pair of 5 element beams and the stacked 6m HO loop omni's.  Both 
played well and we had no problems with the 6m set-up after we had 
readjusted the omni's the weekend before.  Some late night 6m WSJT 
FSK441 contacts were made by Jim during the wee hours to increase our 
grid total on 6.

Scott NN4W was the 2m band captain and used his K-3 with P-3 panadaptor 
and Elecraft 2m transverter along with his newly refurbished "Plumbers 
Delight" 2m amp.  There was a problem with one of the TR relays during 
the contest, but otherwise the equipment performed excellently.  Ron's 
2m back-up amp was used after the relay problem was discovered.  For 
antennas, we had the stacked pair of 2m12 beams up, along with Scott's 
HB 2m omni's.  We also had set up a pair of CC 13B2's vertically 
polarized on an AZ-El rotator to experiment with 2m EME.  This set-up 
worked great and we made 5(6?) Q's off the moon on 2 meters for a real 
high light to this contest.  We won't mention to anyone that we just 
used RG-213 for the feedline to the EME antennas!

Operators for the contest included:  Jim W4KXY, Scott NN4W, Bob W4ZST, 
Kos N4NIA, Skip K5AWC, Tom K4TJD, Ron WW8RR, Kim WG8S and Brian NX9O. 
All these ops stayed over on Saturday night.  We also had Dusty NR4N 
operate on his first visit to the W4ZST SmithHill contest site.  Other 
visitors included Jeff W0ONR, Chris W4ONT, Mary W4MWP and their son Lee 
whose call I have lost and Jack K5SFE and Charlotte also came Saturday 
evening to watch the activities and have dinner with the group.

We had met as a group at Rooster's for lunch on Saturday before the 
contest and had a cookout for Saturday night dinner with all the above 
mentioned ops and visitors in attendance.  The grill was going for folks 
to cook their burgers, dogs, sausages and steaks to go with the salad 
and baked potatoes prepared by W4ZST.  Scott also cooked about 8 pounds 
of wings which were immediately consumed by the group in typical 
Fourlanders fashion.  We had pancakes and sausage for brunch on Sunday 
and skipped ordering pizza as we had originally planned for lunch. 
Everyone was pretty tired and the original plan to go to the Mexican 
restaurant for Sunday evening petered out too.

Thanks to Brian and Kim for assembling my new 222FO16 antennas during 
the contest when they weren't operating.  Some other items got worked on 
also since there were ample operators for the two stations.

Field Day update:  I submitted the W4NH FD results before the deadline 
and want to let you know that it was 3A, commercial, with 20 
operators/visitors and our points total was 2602 as submitted.

September VHF QSO Party:  Time to start thinking about the September 
contest too as it is only 5 weeks away now.  Scott came up yesterday to 
take down the 2m station and we also took down all the 2m antennas.  We 
folded up the tables in Great White and put the antenna racks back in 
with all but the 6m antennas now loaded to go for September.  The 
contest will be  September 10 and 11 and the convoy will leave to go up 
on Friday the 9th and return on Monday the 12th.  One development of 
note is that Jim W4KXY has found out he has a business trip scheduled 
overseas and won't be able to make it for the contest.  This means I'll 
probably drop the microwave and be 6m band captain or swap for another 
band.  We'll also need to arrange for someone to pull a trailer for the 
contest too since Jim always pulls one.  I'm counting on all the usual 
suspects for the contest.  Let me know if there are problems and make 
your plans to be with us.  The reservations are made at the campground 
already.

73, Bob