[Fourlanders] CQWW VHF contest report

[w4zst at windstream.net]

Not really a lot to report on this one.  Once again, no good propagation for the contest from here at the W4ZST QTH.  Operators were W4ZST, K4SQC, N4NIA, WG8S, WW8RR and K4VJM.

Ivan, Johnny and Kim came up Friday night and we went to dinner at Johnny B's.  Johnny was still working on his 2m EME station consisting of a Flex 1500 and M2 SS 2m Amp.  The antennas were finally set up Friday evening and we found that they are definitely more than a 2 man job.  They are a very nice looking set of 20 element cross-polarization M2 antennas, now on an Alpha-Spid rotator on Johnny's tower trailer.  It's going to stay set up here for a while so Johnny can try to get some on-air time.  

The contest weekend included the Dubus European digital EME contest so there was a lot of activity on Friday and Saturday nights and a perfect opportunity to try out his new EME station, but the 'TIME' gods were against us.  As it turned out, Johnny only copied one line of a WSJT QSO between Marshal and an Eu station.  He was pretty disappointed and we also didn't make any 6m FSK-441 Q's either, because of the timing problem.  We are still working on the solution to that as it is important for Q's in the future.  We know that our time server wasn't working properly and attempts to sync to internet time (which should have been OK) didn't take hold either.  We will get this problem solved.

Ron and Kos came up on Saturday to operate and Kos stayed Saturday night along with Kim, Ivan and I.  Johnny was going back and forth home after his 2m listening in the wee hours.  Moonrise was 1 AM on Saturday morning and 2AM on Sunday morning.  We also had two visitors from the local community, Duane K4PTT who used to contest with me before I went in with the Fourlanders and Paul KD4CQU who was coming to visit and see what we were doing for his first time.  Wish there had been some band activity for them to see, mostly they just got shown around the stations and antennas set up.

Speaking of the stations, the 6m set-up used Johnny's FT-2000 and my Commander 6m amp, as usual with his interface and Funcube Dongle Pro+ used for the panadaptor.  The 2m station used Ivan's FT-920 and my Commander 2m amp and we had another Funcube Dongle Pro for the panadaptor.  6m had the stacked pair of 5 element beams and 2m the pair of 9 element beams, both still set up from the January contest.  Going to have to take them down soon to get ready for the September contest on the mountain.

Kim brought us Subway sandwiches for lunch on Saturday and also went back to town to pick up Pizza's for dinner from Gustavo's on the square in Dahlonega. We had pancakes and sausage for breakfast on Sunday, Ham and Cheese sandwiches and chips for lunch and finished off the leftover pizza after the contest ended at 5PM on Sunday.

Results were 20,592 points in the log.  Probably not our best showing for the CQWW VHF contest.  Looked like a January score.  Kim got a couple of hours of a good 6m opening on Saturday and I got a good opening for an hour or so on 6 before the end of the contest on Sunday.  206 Q's and 62 grids on 6m and we got into northern CA and the band swung back around to TX at the end.  Only 29 Q's and 16 grids on 2m.  Pretty boring for the 2m ops.  Other than K8TQK in EM89 in OH, the 2m station grid map was just the usual ground wave footprint.

No equipment problems this time except for the accurate 'time' problems.  This was also another test of the Dell Optiplex computers and we had the server and two stations on with them.  I also used one of my Dell Optiplexes for the 2m panadptor, but had noise problems trying to use one on 6 for the panadaptor.  Ended up using W4KXY's old 6m logging computer (which he donated to the cause) for the 6m panadptor and that solved the noise problems that the (optiplex) computer was generating and the radio was picking up on 6m.  No problem on the 2m station.

So, there is the contest report.  Keep making your plans for the September contest which we will start talking about soon as time is flying.

I attended the Central States VHF conference last weekend in Austin and had a great time.  Learned some good stuff, met some new folks, saw a lot of old friends, presented a paper on computer logging and interfacing and was totally worn out on my 2 day return trip home.  Finally recovered today!!

73, Bob