[Fourlanders] September Contest Summary

[Bob Lear]

A little later than usual because of some wind blowing around us. 
Someone said that it wouldn't even rain up at the campsite.  I was wrong 
about that for sure.  Maybe I should be replaced as weather prognosticator!

We ended up having to leave the campground early because the Park 
Service was planning to close the Blue Ridge Parkway and that's our only 
access to the campsite.  We got the word while still having breakfast on 
Sunday morning.  So we lost as much as 12 contest hours on some of the 
stations.  We made 6m take-down last as there are usually more contact 
opportunities there anyway.  We ended up leaving the campground around 
3:30 PM and made it back to Dahlonega with the convoy about 7:30 PM, 
stopping for a late lunch in Franklin on the way back.  We positioned 
some trailers and unloaded some things from them and everyone got back 
to their own homes before we got any kind of weather to speak of.  I did 
have 60-70 mph sustained winds here on the hill top and my HF dipole 
broke but the only other antennas in the air were the 2m EME antennas 
and they survived unscathed.  I did have a lot of limbs to clean up 
afterward but no large trees down on my property.  I was out of power 
for 48 hours and out of phone and internet for 4 days.  I did use the 
contest generator a while to run my refrigerators as they were starting 
to warm up.  Also nice to run the well pump and hot water heater for a 
much-needed shower before we got power back.  Haven't heard of any of 
our folks with real damage other than wire antennas down.

Operators for the contest were 6m band captain Johnny Kludt K4SQC, 2m 
captain Jim Worsham W4KXY, 222 was Bob Lear W4ZST, 432 was Ron Rogers 
WW8RR.  Other operators were Kim Hensley WG8S, Bill Pence KI4US, Paul 
Yeager W4SKI, Jim Rogers WE8W and a new recruit from Dahlonega, Rick 
Woodard KK4LPP.  Rick was cajoled into coming along with us and pull the 
6m/chuckwagon trailer.  We very much appreciate his help and hope that 
he had a good time for the contest.  Thanks also to all for pulling all 
the trailers up.  We had 7 trailers in the convoy and Jim Rogers pulled 
his camper up too.  Set Up went well, with the exception of breaking 
another steel cable on the 6m antenna trailer.  Replacement cable was 
brought up, installed and we went about our biz.  We had two ham 
visitors come by on Saturday, Ryan Kovaks WG4I (ex KK4OSG) and Joel 
Shannon KC4WZB, who were in the area doing SOTA contacts, 'Summits on 
the Air'.  Ryan was with us last September helping to operate the FM 
stations we used that time.

Not a very impressive score for a September contest.  We really didn't 
get in on any good band openings.  Naturally, after we had to leave, 
openings were reported for Sunday evening that we missed. The results 
have been submitted to ARRL and the 3830 scores web page.
Our reported score was 18304 from 174 QSO's and 88 total multipliers, 
broken down as follows:
6m    101    46
2m     38     15
222    11     10
432    24     17

On 6m, phone/CW Q's were 47/17 for 36% of the total and WSJT 
(MSK-144/FT-8) were 53/29 for 54%.  There was some chatter on the 
reflectors after the contest that too many folks were staying on 
digital, even for 'local' Q's which could probably have been made on 
phone.  I'm not sure what to think about that.  Yes, a digital Q takes 
longer but if you've made the Q by any method, it's in the log so I 
don't know if there is a real argument to be made there.  We'll see how 
the comments keep going.

Only one digital Q on 2m.  Jim made it with Marshall K5QE on MSK-144.  
He had problems with decoding on the 2m station.  It was the W4ZST 
'normal' 2m contest station that Jim was using and he made a number of 
20m practice WSJT Q's with it before the contest and the 2m transverter 
used has made well over 150 EME Q's using WSJT so I don't know what 
happened there but I am going to test it here in the shack again to see 
if there may have been some problem.
Even though the 222 station was equipped for WSJT now, there were no 
requests and we didn't try to call CQ with it.
On 432, Ron made 5 EME QSO's, all grids that we wouldn't have gotten 
otherwise.

On Friday night we had grilled Brats, buns, hot German Potato Salad and 
cole slaw.  Saturday morning was Scrambled Eggs, bacon and potato 
cakes.  Lunch was Ham/Turkey/Cheese sandwiches and potato chips.  We had 
a new recipe for dinner Saturday night; Chicken Corn Chowder with 
biscuits.  Turned out very good even though we ate a little late.  I 
have the recipe available if anyone wants it.  First time we had chicken 
in a long time.  I don't have Dutch Ovens so I can't do Chicken Pot Pie 
like Jimmy Dean does for us, but I think everyone enjoyed the chowder.  
Hit the spot in the cool evening. Sunday morning we had Pancakes and 
Sausage which we were still eating when we got the word we had to 
leave.  I had planned to make chili Sunday night with Jimmy Dean's 
recipe but that ended up being my meals for a couple of days during the 
hurricane as I made it up Monday before the power went out at my place.  
It was fine!! Speaking of cool evenings, the temperatures both nights 
were certainly cold enough to need several blankets.  I don't know how 
low it got but it was getting too low for me for sure!

Full time food was really only about $20 for our short time and I'm 
refunding the excess that I collected from the operators.  My simple 
math mistake.  Our shared costs for Diesel Fuel, Camping and cellular 
data were $70 each but since we had to leave early, Jim did get a refund 
from the campground and he will credit that to each of us.

Johnny wrote a nice article for the North Fulton (NFARL) club about our 
adventures.  He has been helping me trying to get info out to recruit 
new members for the group.  The article is at 
https://www.nfarl.org/enews/eNEWS_2017-09.pdf
Please help out and encourage some new members for the Fourlanders. We 
need some.

73, Bob