[VHFcontesting] Do you remember, that time in September? (2001)

[Andy Z]

Hi All de Andy/K1RA,

  The K8GP group and I would like to share with the VHF/UHF and 
contesting community a bit of our experiences from operating the VHF & 
UHF bands from Spruce Knob, WVa (FM08fq).  Its been almost a year and 
the upcoming Sept. VHF contest is just around the corner.  If anyone was 
on in 2001, they may have gotten a glimpse of a great east coast tropo 
opening and shared in the good DX conditions that weekend.  To give a 
little back to all those who worked us, to spark other peoples interest 
and to allow those to tweak there operating skills, Ive put several 
hundred megabytes of streaming MP3 audio online from our Sept 2k1 
operations on 144, 222, 432, 903 & 1296 MHz bands (see link below). 
 This should be easily copiable even over a 28kbps modem (MP3 encoding = 
Mono/24kbps/11025Hz) Given you have a soundcard and one of the latest 
streaming MP3 players (WinAMP, RealPlayer, MS MediaPlayer, etc.) you 
should be ready to enjoy the excitement :)

A few words about the setup...its highly experiemental.  I do this as a 
hobby, not professionally, so if it doesnt work for you, sorry.  Ive 
batch processed much of the audio, trying to remove dead air and the 
K8GP transmissions, leaving only the stations we heard.  As a result of 
the later, some of the audio may seem choppy.  Thats the price I pay for 
not editting the 2 Gbytes of audio by hand!  On the flip side, there may 
be minutes of band noise that wasnt removed properly...again, its only a 
hobby!

As a side note, I also captured and animated the east coast IR WX maps 
for the weekend of the Sept 2001 VHF contest.  For those with broadband, 
checkout the 4Mbyte+ animated GIFs, which if you look closely enough, 
shows the hurricane approaching the coast, which most likely enhanced 
the operating condx that weekend.

We hope you get a kick out of this.  Enjoy and hope to cu this Sept 
contest on 50 MHz and up!  And remember you could be caught on MP3 !

andyz - K1RA

K8GP & DVMS Homepage @ http://k8gp.net/

K8GP Contest Audio Hotlinks @ http://k8gp.net/audio