[Fourlanders] W4ZST VHF contest summary

[Bob Lear]

Brian NX9O and I did the January VHF contest here at my shack as 
Multi-Op since the Fourlanders have been continuing to distance.  We 
also did Sept here and the fall EME contest.
I think I've had enough contesting with my call and sure hope we can get 
back on with W4NH soon.  Maybe things will be better and we can do the 
June contest here and the September contest on the mountain. Been some 
time since we've gone there for sure.

The 6m station has been set up since last June but still we had problems 
with getting the software programs to cooperate.  Finally got that going 
just minutes before contest time.  Brian had come up on Saturday morning 
but I had been working on getting the stations running for over a week 
and doing little else.  2m, 222 and 432 had worked flawlessly for the 
EME contest and all I really had to do was change over to make JTx the 
digital program.  For EME we had been running JT10 for TX and RX with 
JTx for RX only on all three stations.  Thought that would be easy but 
it sure wasn't.  Getting latest N1MM and JTx installed and working 
properly was not a slam dunk.  But once we got things going we had very 
few problems for the remainder of the contest.  We did have to shut down 
the 7300 and 6m computer completely to recover one time during the 
contest.  The report that Ron forwarded from one of his friends about 
contest setup problems and Ron's own Lessons learned report were tame 
compared to all the I went through here.  So much rebooting of computers 
and very unhappy that the latest two W10 machines insisted on PW's that 
just made me have to do so much more each time.  It was frustrating and 
I cussed it plenty.
BTW, for those who haven't visited lately I have finally posted some 
pictures and details about the stations on my QRZ page after I found 
that is wasn't too complicated.

We did have a good time otherwise and Brian is a great digital 
operator.  I made some initial 6m SSB Q's and he went over to FT8 on 6m 
and later MSK144 and I couldn't get the 6m station back.  He was also 
good at running the 2m station at the same time when I was tied up on 
the other two.  Our results:

Band Mode Q's Grids
50    FT8    198    60
50    MSK    32    24            A number of CO and WY grids on MSK for 
good multipliers and our best distances
50    SSB      11     8
144    FM     2       0
144   FT8    51    20
144    SSB    12    5
222    FT8    7      7
222    SSB    2      1
432     FM    2     1
432    FT8    15    8
432    USB    5     3          for a total of 337 Q's    137 Grids and   
50416 points.

This is the second highest score made from here in EM84 for a January 
contest.  Only 2012 was higher with 54080 and was limited multi.  We'll 
have to wait and see how we come out but I think it should be a new 
division record for points and we may end up 4th nationwide multi.  And 
again we see that digital has taken over.  We watched so many working 
less than 25 mile contacts using FT8 when they would have been so much 
quicker on phone and to me more satisfying.  But there we go...........

I picked up good Hickory Prime BBQ for us on Saturday night and we had 
enough of that leftover for Sunday lunch.  But we very much miss Jerry 
and his fabulous cooking for the contests.  I just fixed breakfast 
biscuits for us each day and we had frozen dinners on Sunday night so we 
wouldn't have to go out.  Ham sandwiches for lunch.  Brian stayed thru 
Monday and 'borrowed' his own Great White trailer for a business trip to 
Huntsville the next day.  It came back later in the week and we got it 
reoriented without having to move any of the others here.

Special thanks to Jeff the Rover WB8LYJ who gave us so many Q's and 
grids, many for multipliers as we don't usually work some of those SW GA 
grids.  I'm amazed that he can be roving and doing digital on four 
bands.  I find it hard to keep up with one band here!!
And thanks to all of you who posted your scores for the Fourlanders both 
with ARRL for the contest and on 3830 scores.

Here's hoping that things will get back to normal, whatever we remember 
that to be.  Put the June contest on your calendars and we'll see about 
whether some of us can get together and operate here for that one.

73, Bob