[VHFcontesting] June Contest at KM0T

[Mike A. King - KM0T]

Hi all, just a quick report from EN13 and the contest effort over the
weekend.

It did not turn out as expected unfortunately, but tried to make the best of
it.  I had spent months building equipment and a new tower for the 5.7 and
10 Ghz bands, also rover equipment for N0DQS for the same bands.  Well, the
equipment arrived late and set me back in terms of building the stuff, we
actually got the dishes on the rover about 10 minutes before the contest
started!  The tower was only raised an hour before the contest, talk about
waiting to the last minute!

As an aside,

We had a thunderstorm go through Friday evening, it looked harmless enough
and I was working on the new tower as it was laid on its side (MA-40 crankup
mast).  It started to rain a bit and I thought I would hang out in the
garage and watch the storm go past.  Well, as the wall cloud hit, the winds
jumped to 50 MPH immediatly.  I quick ran into the house and swung the other
tower antennas into the wind.  As I did that, the winds jumped to 56 MHP.
Not a problem, my crankup tower was all the way down.  We had seen 56 MPH a
number of times here and I was not worried.  Well, it got worse and I saw
the wind meter jump up to 69 MPH.  I had always thought that my wind vane /
anamometer had "mechanical limitations" since I had never seen it above 56
MPH, well was I wrong :)  My wife and I got pretty excited and brought
Patricia downstairs, as we did that the whole house was shaking and I though
the pictures were going to fall off of the walls. It truely looked like a
hurricain outside, just like you see those reporter guys on TV standing out
in the horizontal rain fall, it was very scarey.  Well the winds gusted up
to 75 MPH on my "mechanically limited" anamometer and thats when I decided
to go downstairs.  Offical weather service wind speed was clocked at 77 MPH
in the next town.  I managed to sneak a look at my tower during it all, I
really thought I was in trouble.  Wish I had the video camera going.

It simmered down a bit and my wife said, where is our patio table?  "I told
you to bring it in!"  I growned and said,  "Oh, there it is, on one of our
trees"  At least it was not broke!

It must have been an awsome wind, because the antennas and mast turned
inside the rotor clamp of the M2 rotor of the main tower.  I lost about 30
degrees of rotation, need to recalibrate it.  The tower survived and all the
antennas.  I do believe their 100 MPH survivability claims now for the M2
line of antennas.  All nearby residences and neihbors who had trampolines
that my kid likes to jump on are no longer in the county.  My wife and I
think that was the good part of the storm!

Anyway, that set me back all Friday night for tower work!  Glad it was not
worse.

Back to the contest email......

We then tested and all appeared to be ok.  Got one contact on 10 Ghz and 5.7
and the N0DQS/R set off on his journey.  Well, as he went out to some grid
corners, it appeared that he was not hearing me at all, even when I was
hearing him very well on both bands. (That part was exciting!) He came back
and we tested things out, He could get no more than a mile or so and then
would not hear anything. We then scrapped the 5.7 and 10 Ghz plans for the
contest.  Oh well, we tried.  I think I now know what the problem is and
will resolve very shortly.  (Dont even ask, but it was related to a
meltdown in my brain that caused the problem  too much to do and too little
time) The home station appears to be up and running for those bands.  I
heard Gary, W0GHZ on 5.7 Ghz, but very weak and condix were bad.  My 250 mW
would have never made it up there.  On 10 Ghz, I am getting about 11 watts
at the feed horn of the dish, with the transverter / amp mounted right
behind it.

For those of you on 10 and 5.7 Ghz (and the lower bands for that matter)  I
will be looking for you in the next solid tropo opening.

So, that fried the first 3 hours or so of the contest and it took the wind
out of my sails.  It took some time to get back into the swing of things.  I
guess I missed some 6M to the NE at that time.

Conditions on 6M, not bad, almost 100 grids and over 200 Qsos, none to the
SW past New Mexico.  A few 20 minute openings to the NW and a good one to
the eastern seaboard.

2M was fair to bad.  Made one contact to EN60, that was the farthest east.
Got into EM47, 27, 19 and 17 and DM98 to the south.  Got into EN16 and EN25,
35 to the north.  Never heard Bill  K0AWU, which was unusual.  Got to work
the DN95 guys too on 6M and 2M.  Never heard DM79 on 2M, normally hear them
on Sunday early afternoon it seems.  Was W1XE Multi-Op going?  Never found
Bob - K2YAZ in EN74, he is usually always workable on 144 and 222 Mhz.

The rest of the microwaves up thru 3.4 Ghz worked wonderfully.  The new
rover box on 3.4 Ghz with the 40 watt Toshiba amp showed its stuff, never a
problem.  Always as strong as the 25 watts on 2.4 Ghz from the rover.

Then had CPU probs for WSJT, never got it going.  Missed out on a bunch of
WSJT contacts in the night.  Lots of rocks too, so that was a bummer.  Sorry
to all of you that I messed up on the scheds.

Poor activity on 222 and 432.  Grid counts were down on all bands
unfortunately.

So, better luck next time, score was just over 150K  Nothing like last year,
thats for sure.  See you in UHF and September, I will be ready!

I will have a full report on the website soon, with pics of the new tower,
dishes, etc.

Thanks for all the contacts!

73

Mike  KM0T en13vc
www.qsl.net/km0t


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