[Fourlanders] W4NH June contest Summary

[w4zst at windstream.net]

Well, In the January summary I said the gods of propagation did not come to 
visit then and they were pretty slim again, especially for this being a June 
contest.

This has got to be pretty low score for us for a June contest.  I know we wanted to  
know what we could do from here at my QTH and with this low score and the 
equally disappointing results we got from the time we ended up doing a 
September contest here, it is looking like my QTH may not be a very good contest 
location after all. 
 
That we shall have to wait and see.  Of course, I'm not nearly as high an 
elevation as Mile-High and that would certainly make a difference.  Maybe if we 
could get the antennas higher here (or maybe even have some real, permanent 
antennas, like a real station!!) it might help. 
 
Here are the unedited results.  I will go over the logs and submit soon. 
 
Band   Q's    Grids 
 6m     335    114 
 2m     56      18 
222      6         5 
432     15        9 
          412    146    63,218 points total 
 
And of course, that made it pretty boring to be sitting at the radio and just 
calling CQ to the empty airwaves.   These have got to be record low numbers 
for 222 and 432, probably even worse than a January contest.  Makes it 
hard to justify the time we spent setting those stations up!  The fact that 6m 
was open some hurt the contest, as also probably the World Cup going on 
and it being Father's Day, but there was no sustained propagation even on Six 
and none on the upper bands.   Kim WG8S got a good opening on 6 on voice 
and Jim WE8W ran up some good numbers Sunday afternoon on 6m CW. 
 
 We managed to make up for some of it with good food and drink.  Jerry once 
again brought one of his most excellent briskets, beans, and smoked sausages, 
that along with my large batch of slaw, pretty much all disappeared Saturday 
night.  Many thanks to Jerry for providing this great meal for all of us. 
 
Some of the operators met at Johnny B's for Saturday lunch and some met at 
Roosters.  I cooked Pancakes and sausage for breakfast on Sunday morning and we 
had sandwiches and chips for lunch on Sunday.  A lot of ops again left early 
since there was so little activity and for Sunday dinner those of us left shared 
Pizzas that Scott brought us from Gustavo's and Johnny B's. 
The 6 of us who were here Friday night went to 'Don Pollo' Restaurant in town 
for an excellent meal and then had chicken biscuits and cinnamon rolls for 
breakfast on Saturday morning.  Once again, no one went hungry or lost any 
weight over this weekend. 
 
Operators were Kim WG8S, Jim W4KXY, Ivan K4VJM, Kos N4NIA, Jerry 
W5TDY, Jack K5FSE, Bill KI4US, Scott NN4W, Ron WW8RR, Jim WE8W, 
Bob W4ZST and Brian NX9O who managed to come up and operate on Saturday 
after a long absence. We had two visitors who stopped by on Saturday: 
Randy KK4ONJ and Dale KD4CVR.  We had 7 of us staying overnight Friday night 
and 10 for Saturday night.  Two were camping out even though we had floor space left
for cots or whatever in the Air-Conditioned house!  Two stayed over on Sunday night. 
 
We started about 10 or 11 on Friday morning with 4 of us here at first, setting 
up the 432 array and working on the brakes on the generator trailer. 
Dodging showers off and on all day Friday, we did get the 432 array up and made 
some progress on the brakes.  Scott brought his tower trailer and the 2m EME 
antennas and got that set up Friday evening before we went off to supper. 
The rest of the evening we worked on the radios, setting up and testing the stations 
in the shack.  6m and 22 were still set up from January.  It turned out that we had to
 wait till Saturday morning to get the proper new parts for the trailer brakes and Ivan
and Bill did the work on Friday and Saturday that I just barely got started on Friday 
morning.  Now the trailer has new brakes and I can't thank Ivan and Bill enough for t
he great work they did.  I would have never had the time by myself.  The trailer will 
now be ready for Field Day use by NFARL, who are going to help out with the expense 
of the brake job.  They don't have enough in their treasury to pay Bill and Ivan for the 
labor though!!!  And the trailer is now ready for another trip to the mountain, where the 
brakes mean so much more to have, going up and down the mountains for that trip.
On Saturday morning we put up the 2m and 432 omni antenna arrays and Ron made 
some changes to the 2m EME set-up. 
 
Several items of note for the contest: 

Band Captains:  Johnny couldn't make it this contest, but left his radio for us to use on 6m.
W4ZST did the duties to get it all up and running, but it was really still set up from the 
January contest, as was 222 (still set up from Jan 2013!) and I made sure it was all up 
and running as Brian only was able to come for Saturday afternoon.  All the antennas 
except for the 2m EME and the 432 H-frame array of 4 yagis were also still set-up here 
from the January contest.  I had used them myself for the Spring Sprints and for several 
nets on week nights to check them out along with the stations that were still set up.  I put 
my own 2m and 432 stations on the air for the sprints and some of the nets over the past 
couple of months.  Kos and Ron had come the Sunday afternoon before the contest to 
set up the 2m and 432 stations.  I used the 2m station for the Monday night net to check it out.
 
Jack K5FSE once again offered to let us use his W6PQL solid state 2m amplifier 
for the contest.   

After the rain on Friday, the weather was pretty nice, but 
warm over the rest of the weekend.  It seems that we overwhelmed the shack AC though 
as it seemed to never recover and cool back off.  Probably because we kept the doors 
open too much on Friday and the high humidity took it's toll.  I thought 
that when we left the amps off overnight Saturday after we quit at 3 AM that it might 
recover, but it took until Tuesday to overcome all the FourLanders hot air! 
At first, I thought there was a problem with the AC or the Freon charge, but it 
is back to normal now as I cool it in here, and it's much to hot to go outside!!! 

WSJT results:  We made our skeds on 6m and then worked some randoms, but no 
success passing to 2m. 
 
We really had no problems this time with equipment or antennas, only a minor WL 
problem that we found and solved. 

We also used the new batch of Dell Optiplex computers that Ron has acquired and set-up 
for us.  One on each of the stations for the radio control and logging and one for a server.  
All performed as expected.  We did have a couple of other PC's on stations doing panadapter duty.

My personal thanks again to Bill for spending time on one of  my computers to make it finally able
to install some Atmel software on it.  I don't think he got much operating time with all the time on 
the computer and the brake job.

Thanks to all who participated and visited and ate with us. Now waiting for September and a 
return to the mountain top for that contest.  Reservations have been made and I sure hope we 
will be able to get a large enough group and trailer pullers together to get back to normal!!
 
73,  Bob