[Fourlanders] W4ZST VHF contest summary

[Jim Worsham]

Great job Bob and Brian! Yeah, I am hoping that we can all get our shots by June and get back together at your place. It feels like a lifetime ago even though it has only been a year.

73
Jim, W4KXY

Sent from my iPad

> On Jan 31, 2021, at 4:55 PM, Bob Lear <w4zst at windstream.net> wrote:
> 
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Fourlanders mailing list
> Fourlanders at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/fourlanders
> Sent to: wa4kxy at bellsouth.net