Another good contest this time.  Very good propagation and openings on 6m and 2m.  No idea where we will end up in the standings as it seems everyone around the country enjoyed the openings.  Will just have to wait and see when the results are published.  Speaking of published results, the July QST came right after the contest and we made third place nationwide Multi-Op for the Jan 2022 contest.  This makes three Third Place and Two Second Place finishes over the past 20 years, one second and one third from the mountain and the others here in GA.  I think that's pretty good from the SE region.  We've only been out of the top ten 6 times in 22 years, that's 53 contests.

On 6m we worked the Pacific NW, Washington and Oregon, Southern California, the Caribbean and several EU stations for 10 grids there.  On 2m we made it to KS, NB and SD for our best distances.  Bill also made three 432 EME Q's on Saturday night.  You can see from the results below that 6m SSB was back in the game for this contest, likely due to the ARRL adding an analog only category.  We have been limited to almost all FT8 Q's on 6m for the past few years but this time it was like the good old days, nice pileups on 6m phone and we really enjoyed getting those.  Many times sounded like 20m on Field Day.  A highlight was working our good friend and former Fourlander, Johnny K7SYS from Idaho on 6m FT8 at 2300 miles with his 80 Watts and loop antennas!  I finally got the 1296 station back on for this contest thanks to much help from Bill.  We didn't see a lot of opportunities but we did work N4SVC in Florida, EM80 at 300 miles with the 22W and Jay KC4JD in Dawson County, EM74 for two grids and many point jumps.  They were also the only stations we worked on all 5 bands.  I'm going to try to keep the microwave bands on in future.  I have missed that for several years now.

Bill has submitted the score to ARRL and I have posted on 3830 also, Multi-Op.  The ARRL entry didn't show as many points as the N1MM log does but I'm sure that will not affect our ultimate position in the standings.



Operators for the contest were Brian NX9O, Kim WG8S, Bill KI4US, Bob K4VBM, Jerry W5TDY and Bob W4ZST.  Brian and Bob got up early Sunday morning to take advantage of Meteor Scatter and got several new grids for multipliers.   We had Ron WW8RR and Chris W4ONT come visit on Saturday and for dinner.  It was good to have folks come visit again after the past couple of years.  A couple of Fourlander ops had to cancel due to illness and other obligations.  Also Mike KC4RI met us at Roosters on Saturday for lunch but didn't have time to come up for the contest.  Jimmy Dean, K2JB was roving in our area and came by on Sunday evening to visit and have some supper with us.  It was great to see him again too.  We were very happy that we had no real problems with our equipment or antennas.  The only real complaint was JTx losing contact with the radio and causing us to have to reset the connection.  That happened on several stations on Sunday afternoon.  Otherwise Murphy was not in his usual attendance here for the contest.

Once again, Jerry W5TDY, the master BBQ smoker has fed us (and spoiled us) royally.  Here is Jerry's menu.
Saturday Dinner: Smoked Baby-back Ribs, smoked chicken wings, Smoked Sausage, Baked Beans, coleslaw, Texas Toast
Sunday Breakfast - Egg/Sausage/Vegetable/cheese casserole
Sunday Lunch - Cold Cut sandwiches (Ham/Turkey/Cheese) Chips, pickles, left over coleslaw
Sunday Dinner - Left-overs (if any) or order pizza?

He made so many ribs that we had plenty for Sunday night and even for 4 of us to have another rib meal after the contest last week!  And they were excellent as usual.  Enough breakfast for us still on Monday morning and take home from that too.  Kim and Bill stayed three nights, Bob only on Saturday night and Brian on Saturday and Sunday nights. We had room left over as three ops didn't make it this time.

The usual stations were on.  On 6m the IC7300, Beko kW amp and the two 5 element beams at 35/50'.  I had recently had the 6m tower down to replace the lower antenna that sort of fell off in the January snow and also shortened the 6m phasing lines and the main feed line, taking out about 55' of length that we didn't need.  I had tested all feedlines and TDR'd them.  I also returned the Bip/Bop Box to service.  We put the 6m omni's back up on Friday afternoon too with new guy ropes.  6m performed well for the contest.  The 144, 222 and 432 stations had Flex 1500's, DEMI transverters and Lunar Link amps at about 1KW.  We also have preamps on all those bands and use the taller 2x12 el 2m terrestrial antennas and the cross pol antenna pairs on 222 and 432 for EME and terrestrial.  The 1296 station was also a Flex 1500 and DEMI transverter but no amp or preamp to the 2x45 el loop yagis.  I wanted to get 900 and 2304 back on the air too but problems with the 1296 station (mostly of my own making!) took too much of my time and I just couldn't get to the other bands.  

That's it for now.  Be sure to put the September contest on your calendars, Sept 10-12 this year.  Most likely here again as we still haven't had any ideas about a new portable location.

73, Bob