[Fourlanders] My contest recap
Brian McCarthy
brian at rfacres.com
Tue Jun 23 21:52:22 EDT 2020
Hello All,
I have submitted mine this evening.
Band Mode QSOs Pts Grd Pt/Q
50 FT4 11 11 8 1.0
50 FT8 8 8 1 1.0
50 USB 11 11 8 1.0
144 FM 1 1 1 1.0
144 USB 8 7 2 0.9
222 FM 1 2 1 2.0
420 FM 1 2 1 2.0
420 USB 5 8 2 1.6
Total Both 46 50 24 1.1
Score: 1,200
1 Mult = 1.9 Q's
The FT4/8 contacts were all QRP, with barefoot Flex 1500. Would have had
more Q's if I had started setting up the software earlier. Needed to do it
field day style in the backyard with a laptop.
Anna, N9KHC said, "I'm not feeling it." and refused to make any contacts.
Bummer. Claire, KK4JJT, was out for the weekend celebrating that her
college finals were over. Scratch them off the list of expected logs. Sorry.
I am humbled by how serious some of you took to this contest. For me it was
a good experiment. I had fun and proved I could get at least a basic 4 band
station on the air.
Cheers All,
Brian
NX9O
On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 2:36 PM Bryan W3CP <w3cp at w3cp.info> wrote:
> 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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Fourlanders mailing list
>>> Fourlanders at contesting.com
>>> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/fourlanders
>>> Sent to: tommcelroy.mail at gmail.com
>>>
>> --
>> Sent from my Teletype.
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>> Sent to: w3cp at w3cp.info
>>
> _______________________________________________
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> Sent to: rfacres at gmail.com
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