[Fourlanders] My contest recap

Tue Jun 23 14:36:35 EDT 2020

Here is who we are missing (highlighted on left):

[image: image.png]

On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 2:03 PM ww8rr at charter.net <ww8rr at charter.net> wrote:

> Hey Tom,
> How come only Audrey turned in a contest log ?
>
> Didn't the rest of family make any contacts ?
>
> Ron
>
> Sent from my Samsung S4
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Tom McElroy <tommcelroy.mail at gmail.com>
> Date: 06/23/2020 11:44 AM (GMT-05:00)
> To: Ryan Kovacs <tukosei at gmail.com>
> Cc: FourLanders Contest Team <fourlanders at contesting.com>
> Subject: Re: [Fourlanders] My contest recap
>
> Nice work, old man!!!
> We’d love to join you up there in the cool air.
> 73
> Tom and Ham Clan McElroy
>
> On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 9:51 AM Ryan Kovacs <tukosei at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Every year the June VHF contest brings something different. One thing
>> that seems constant: I can never operate to the very end of the contest for
>> one reason or another.
>>
>> Last year I did not operate at all due to family commitments and
>> traveling. 2018 I operated the contest from the Dry Tortugas and rare grid
>> EL84. 2017 from Wayah Bald, NC. And the previous 2 years from Blood
>> mountain north of Helen, GA. This year I picked Rabun Bald, the 2nd
>> highest peak in Georgia at 4700 feet. It is in the extreme NE part of
>> Georgia, 8 miles NE of Clayton, GA and only 2 miles from the North Carolina
>> boarder to the north, grid square EM84. Being off the Bartram trail, it
>> does get some traffic, mostly from day hikers but nowhere near the amount
>> of traffic as the Appalachian Trail like Blood Mountain.
>>
>> New this year was a 25 watt Alinco radio for the 220 band. Previously I
>> had a Baofeng 5w 220 radio that worked ok. The other radio is my Yaesu
>> ft-8900 that I have been using for years for 6m, 2m, and 70cm. I operate in
>> the FM only category since it has less competition but comes with its own
>> set of challenges. For one, FM is terrible for weak signal work. Bands
>> openings happen less often, and when they do happen it has to be strong to
>> work people. FM also takes a lot more power for the same power output when
>> compared to SSB. Also finding an antenna for 6m FM is not easy. On the
>> positive side. Everyone has a radio that can do 2m FM. If you have a
>> license, your probably have an HT that does 2m FM so there is a large pool
>> of people to potentially make contacts with.
>>
>> For antennas, 2m/70cm is provided by an Elk log periodic. This is a
>> lightweight backpackable antenna that I mount on the very top of my push up
>> pole. It might not be the best antenna but under a pound it gets the job
>> done. For 220 I have a 6 element Yagi, kind of heavy and bulky. I may look
>> to replace this next year with something lighter. 6m is a modified Par
>> electronics Moxon. All of this is mounted on a 21-foot aluminum push-up
>> pole.
>>
>> For batteries I had a 40ah Bioenno, 15ah Bioenno, and a 9ah Bioenno
>> battery. My calculations pre-contest showed that I should not use more than
>> 2ah per hour of operating @ 25 hours I would need 50ah of battery. I also
>> wanted to have a cushion since that was my limiting factor 2 different
>> years where I ran out of power ending the contest early for me. Another
>> year a thunderstorm ended the contest early for me. People have asked me
>> about solar power, and I considered it but the complication, hassle, and
>> weight of it outweighed just bringing more battery.
>>
>> This year I am thankful to have my son to carry the food and water. Also,
>> David KN4ZKT helped carry some things up so my load was much lighter this
>> year than in the past! The trip to the top was shorter and less elevation
>> gain than when I used to do Blood Mountain.
>>
>> We arrived on the summit Friday evening and setup camp. I did make a
>> couple of contacts to other SOTA activators and counted them as Summit 2
>> Summit contacts since Rabun Bald is considered a Summits On The Air summit:
>> W4G/NG-002. Other than that, I kept the radios off to conserve power.
>>
>> The next morning, I made more S2S contacts before the contest. Everything
>> was working great. Even before the contest there was a LOT of activity on
>> the 2m calling frequency with sometimes as many as 4 different groups
>> trying to all talk at once. I figured I would try and stay off 146.52 as
>> much as possible because it was only going to get worse. As in the past it
>> was crazy for the first few hours of the contest, my very first contact was
>> on 220 to KC4WZB on another summit. We then worked the other 3 bands. That
>> is how I tried to run all my contacts: work them on the initial band then
>> find out what other bands they had I could work them on. This worked well
>> when the initial contact was on something other than 2m, then I could go to
>> one of the adjacent 2m simplex frequencies (146.49 or 146.55) but there
>> were times when there were people on all 3! The advantage of being up so
>> high, you can hear everyone, and everyone can hear you, but they can’t
>> necessarily hear the other parties talking. So, you sometimes have to play
>> net control.
>>
>> I had kept hearing that 6m was open to the NE but it was never strong
>> enough for FM use. I knew something was up because the noise level was very
>> high on 6m but could not hear anything but static. In previous years I have
>> always had a 6m opening for FM and some Tropo ducting on 2m FM… this year
>> no such luck except for the almost contact with a VA3 station in FN14. The
>> opening didn’t last long enough for us to exchange the info! That was a
>> real bummer and would have really made my weekend.
>>
>> Sunday morning, David hiked up and joined us to work some SSB and had a
>> blast on 6m and 2m with contacts from FL to New England… I was kind of
>> jealous of the contacts he was getting with only 5 watts! But that is the
>> tradeoff running FM. By late morning we started to hear about bad storms
>> heading our way. Like I said, I have never been able to stay until the end
>> of the contest. We made the decision to pack up around 1pm and I think we
>> were hiking by 2:30pm. The whole way down the mountain we were hearing
>> thunder getting closer. That is one thing I don’t mess with is being on a
>> mountain top with a bunch of metal sticking up in the air during a
>> thunderstorm!
>>
>> I had no real equipment issues. Only used 26.31ah of battery out of my
>> 40ah battery, this was also leaving the Yaesu radio on all night to monitor
>> while I slept. Never used the 15ah battery and used a small amount from the
>> 9ah battery to charge my phone. Maybe next year I will leave the 15ah
>> battery at home.
>>
>> I ended up with 193 contacts across the 4 bands (after eliminating dups).
>> 28 on 6 meters from 6 different grids, 99 on 2m from 11 different grids, 43
>> on 70cm from 7 different grids, and 23 on 220 from 3 different grids –
>> which is the best I have ever done on that band. I was hoping to break 200
>> and I would have easily done that if it wasn’t for the storm. I did end up
>> with 21 Summit-to-Summit contacts for SOTA during the weekend, so that was
>> fun.
>>
>> Next year I will try it again from the same summit and see how I can
>> streamline my setup even further. There has also been some talk of doing a
>> group camp up there with multiple operators in September. If we do that, we
>> will have to work out how not to interfere with each other.
>>
>> Here is a link to some of the photos and video I took:
>> https://photos.app.goo.gl/VDf4KCGm9g1aHinR8
>>
>> Ryan
>>
>> WG4I
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Sent to: tommcelroy.mail at gmail.com
>>
> --
> Sent from my Teletype.
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