[Fourlanders] January Contest Summary

[Bob Lear]

Well we had another good time on a rainy day in the winter.  Fortunately 
it wasn't as cold as last year, but the rain on Saturday wasn't very 
welcome, but Sunday was a nicer day for sure.

We scored quite well I think for a January contest and especially better 
than last year and our dismal outing in September.  We ended up with 
55,151 points raw score before Brian checks things over.  Last Jan we 
only had about 22k and Sept was 17k.  I expect we will end up around 6th 
or 7th in the standings for limited multi.

Results Summary
Band	Q's	Mults
6	295	96
2	50	17
222	15	7
432	23	11
Totals	383	131

The Map showed only ground wave distances for the upper bands.  I think 
that they suffered again because 6m was hopping.  That's the usual fate.

On 6m, distant grids were:  N EN47, W DM34, S EL16 EL95 and NE FN84,5,6.
On 2m and 432 we got into FLA, EL98

We had plenty of ops even with Scott having to bail out with a cold.  A 
record number of folks spending the night at the QTH:  Bob W4ZST, Jim 
W4KXY, Kim WG8S, Ron WW8RR, Brian NX9O and daughter Claire, Kos N4NIA, 
Ivan K4VJM, Bill KI4US, Tom K4TJD and Sherman W4ATL.  Also spending the 
night (but we can't get them to operate) were Chris W4ONT and son Lee.

Jeff W0ONR did the cooking as usual, but Chris W4ONT brought BBQ from 
his favorite place in Auburn and also smoked a bunch of sausages for us 
too.  It was most excellent.  Jeff added buns, cole slaw and potato 
salad to round out the meal and I can assure you, we were rounded out!!
Thanks so much to Chris for bringing the BBQ and smoking the sausages 
for our Saturday night dinner.

W4ZST cooked Sausage Patties and Pancakes for Sunday breakfast and Jeff 
brought sloppy Joes, chips and slaw for lunch Sunday.  Sunday dinner was 
Salad and Spaghetti and for both lunch and dinner Jeff outdid himself. 
Thanks again Jeff for the great meals.

I should also mention that we had a good turnout at Rooster's for lunch 
on Saturday with 8 of us there.  Since all the stations were set up and 
the antenna's up, we managed a leisurely lunch and still had plenty of 
time to warm radios and amps up before the contest started.

We also had a number of visitors who stopped by on Saturday to visit and 
some to operate too.  Chris Caldwell W4CCH and son Jacob KJ4VWL both 
operated the 2m station for a while.  Jack K5SFE and Charlotte KJ4EDM 
came before dark Saturday and stayed to eat and talk for a while.  Tom 
W4SDR and Russ KI4WIS also got to come and spend some time on Saturday 
with us.  Glad they all got to visit.

During the contest things went pretty well with only one amp fuse blown 
which turned out to be due to a bad connector on the coax.  Jim had a 
minor interface problem for a while on 6m, but got it straightened out. 
  I don't think we had any other problems.

Ron, Scott, Kos, Tom and myself met again Sunday 1/29 and got all the 
antennas down except 6m.  Scott and Ron packed up their stations and 
took them home and Tom retrieved his camper.  They also helped me move a 
couple of things around in the building that I couldn't do myself and I 
really appreciate that.  We did spend some time using the AIM analyzer 
in TDR and analyze mode on the normal 2m array.  We have some kind of 
SWR problem that we just haven't figured out yet although it mostly 
seems to be some bad coax.  The coax was new but doesn't seem to be 
usable above 6m and we are still looking at the problems.  So now we 
only have to take down the 6m antennas and modify them to ground the 
hairpins, but I may leave them up for a while so I can be on 6m.  Jim 
will come pick up his gear sometime and Brian probably will also, but I 
am in good shape here at the shack and appreciate all the help.  We then 
took a well deserved break at Johnny B's in Dahlonega for refreshments 
and a late lunch.

Thanks also to Tom for donating some nice office chairs, coffee pumper 
pots and a toaster, Ron for donating another microwave oven to the cause 
and Kos and Jim for laptops that we can use for various Fourlander 
functions, like making the AIM analyzer more portable and allowing me to 
use them for club presentations.  Laptops are just so much more 
portable.  Scott also donated a monitor and it turned out that one of 
mine had bit the dust during the contest so that was timely.

Thanks to all for a great contest.  We have our reservations for MileHi 
for June 8, 9 and 10 for the June VHF contest.  Plan on being there!!

73, Bob

Just got my issue of CQ and we were 6th Nationwide in Multi for the CQWW 
VHF contest last July.  Not a bad showing.  We were third in 6m QSO's 
for multi-ops so we got listed there too.