[SCCC] VHF Spring Sprint 440

[Drew Arnett]

5 grids (03/04/12/13/14) and 18 Qs for 90 points.

Good to hear and work other SCCCers.  AG6RS/R was the hero of the
event; worked him in 4 grids including the unique for me DM14.

Heard far many than I worked; heard many stations up north and local
checking into the 8pm Southern California Emergency SImplex Net.
Crazy how many, really.  Only picked up 4 or 5 of them after the net.
(Worked a couple who participate before the net over on the calling
freq.)  I actually heard another net called an hour before also
simplex.  Could barely copy that one, though.

40 W FM mobile and 6 element WA5VJB cheap yagi.  (Same one I used
mountain bike portable for this event 2 years ago.)  Mount Soledad.

It's not a 100+ Q/Hr rate event.  But fun and entertaining in other
ways.  One of the guys from work managed to work me with an HT, not on
high ground, from the Irvine area.  Regular ops, and more folks I
hadn't worked before.  Some interesting chats.  And learned how much
more 440 simplex is used than I knew about before.  (I only V/U FM
during VHF contests, the 10 GHz contest, and SOTA.)

Another lesson learned was to look up the coordinated FM simplex
frequencies for our region.  Did that on SCRBBA before the event and
programmed those into memories.  Turned out to be very useful.  I'll
add those to my HT.

How long until WPX?  :-)

Best regards,

Drew
n7da