[VHFcontesting] K2DRH SOLP June VHF Results (long)

[Bob & Fran Striegl (K2DRH & N2KMA)]

Call: K2DRH
Operator(s): K2DRH
Station: K2DRH

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: EN41
Operating Time (hrs): 30

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
    6:  369   134
    2:  165    51
  222:   57    30
  432:   91    31
  903:   14    11
  1.2:   39    20
  2.3:           
  3.4:           
  5.7:           
  10G:           
  24G:           
-------------------
Total:  735   277  Total Score = 273,953

Club: Society of Midwest Contesters


Had a killer June VHF 'test this year. 6M Es all day Saturday well into the night. It was variously open to FL, the SW and the NE, and occasionally the Q rate exceeded 200/hour for short 10 - 20 minute bursts. I was glad that I had two independent antennas since I had to switch directions several times to follow the E clouds and sometimes it was coming in from multiple areas at once! I was right in the middle of a nice pileup to Texas when I noticed my transverter IF rig's panel lights going dim on TX and my voice trailing off in the monitor. Smoke pouring out of the back of the rig confirmed my suspicions that the repeat requests from the other end may have been motivated by something other than just QRM. 

Thinking quickly I put out the fire, confirmed the rig was toast and ran screaming out of the shack so the dogs would stay out of my way as I rushed to the basement to get the spare rig. Luckily they were identical rigs so all the plugs and control connectors fit, and since it had been used as a transverter platform before, the drive levels were still OK. I had it all back together before N2KMA could pop into the shack to inform me that something was burning. She rolled her eyes and went off shaking her head when I told her my contest rig had gone to the great pileup in the sky and it was lucky I'd bought another identical rig off my friend Dave "because you never know". It pays to have spares! It only took about 15 minutes to get back on the air, but it seemed like forever. Of course by then the Texas pileup was a memory and the band was open somewhere else out in the desert where only the portables and rovers roam. 

While it was exciting when the band would open up to a populated area, most of Saturday the Es was into the DM/DN grids that have about 3 stations per 1000 square miles. After a half hour you've worked it dry no matter how long you call CQ. Calls on 2M were also met with mostly silence since everyone was hanging around 6M looking for that elusive station they didn't work yet or waiting for it to open to somewhere else more productive. Daytime absorption was high and there seemed to be a brick wall between 903 and 1296 with stations more than one or two grids away. 6M kept moving around to the same areas over and over again as familiar calls would swell up to 40 over, then fade out again. When it finally lengthened out to the West Coast for a fresh batch of stations around 10PM local time, it was long past time to be making local Q's on 2M and running WSJT skeds. By then I'd worked VUCC and to spare on 6M and had almost 100K points, but very few 2M and higher QSO's in the log.

I worked several 6 and 2 Meter WSJT skeds from 11PM to 2AM and they all completed quickly. Then I tried a 222 sked for the first time in a contest. I heard very few pings and decoded only partial calls for that half hour. Since my station isn't set up to run the other bands while WSJT is going, that time would have been better spent looking around and running the bands. WSJT is a great mode to add a few extra multipliers in the log that would never get there any other way, but tying up your primary rig with difficult skeds is not the way to go either. Another downside is that it cuts into what normally is a quiet time when a single OP can catch 5 or 6 hours of needed sleep. While it's a great idea for a multi to work WSJT all night, it's not very conducive to Single OP clarity of mind the next day. I'd promised myself a nice nap from 1AM to 5AM and tried to arrange my schedules so I could get it, but my multiplier lust got the best of me and I violated my own rule. Worse, as it turned out I wouldn't get into bed until after 3AM.

While trying to work one of the local multi ops on all bands I discovered that 222 WSJT had found a previously unknown weak spot in my system and reduced my 222 brick to a RF absorption sponge. I was barely putting out a watt. Luckily the multi was loud and heard me anyway! Loud was a good thing on my end too because the in-line sequencer and bias tee for the mast mounted preamplifier was also history. I checked the feedline and found an intermittent N connector at the sequencer so I had to go outside at 3AM and replace the jumper from the hardline into the shack. I had a backup for the sequencer/tee, but not for the amp so I was down to 25W for the rest of the contest. 222 is a great band for contesting and aside from going to CW a lot more often, this didn't really hurt as bad as a similar failure on some other bands would have. Often signals are better on 222 than on 2M and luckily for me this was one of those weekends. 

I finally got to sleep a little after 3 AM. I'd set the alarm for 5:10 so I could be ready for another WSJT sked at 5:20, but woke up just before it went off. I completed that sked quickly, but spent another half hour on 222 and never heard a single ping again. The sked was for an hour, but I pulled the plug early realizing that if I hadn't heard anything from the multi with stacked antennas and 1.5KW, there was little hope he would hear me with 25W. 6M was dead, but 2M was really quiet in the morning so I played catch up on 2M and above and had racked up a fairly respectable total by 10AM, already closing in on my previous best LP score for a June Contest. When 2M slowed down I went to 6 and called CQ, hoping that the Es would make a sudden reappearance at any time; but it was not to be. 

I stayed on 6M most of the day, calling directional CQs and working stations out a couple hundred miles that I could QSY to the other bands too. Calls on 2M went practically unanswered but 6M was working out pretty well for me. Everyone seemed to be waiting there for something to happen during the doldrums, so I stuck with it. I encountered a few familiar rovers and followed them around, working them in several new grids. I even called CQ on a locally popular 2M FM simplex channel; anything to put a few more Q's in the log! It was like Sunday afternoon during a January contest, except with a lot more background noise. The noise level got higher and higher as the day progressed, and was particularly bad to the North and West. By early afternoon I was about ready to nod off from boredom. I took some time off to have a hot meal and returned to the shack in time to see 2M pick up a little as the fathers returned to their shacks from their Father's Day activities.

2M kept getting better and better as more stations got back on the air to finish the contest. Propagation was average with no real surprises as it got cooler and the band stretched out a bit. Six was still working well locally and occasionally I'd catch a small e-cloud, but with the notable exception of a few Caribbean DX and a handful of West Coast stations it was open to the same areas in FL and the Southwest that I'd beat to death the previous day. I spent my time on 2M chasing rovers, calling distant stations for multipliers and running the higher bands as my score creeped up past 200K. I'd already done much better than I'd ever done before and there was still time left. I connected with several stations on skeds we'd made earlier in the contest when 903 and 1296 weren't working as well and slowly passed 250K. I was closing in on 275K in the last minutes of the contest when the aurora hit and the band went crazy. I didn't quite make it to 275K, but it was close.

After several rounds with winter storm damage and antenna problems, I recently revamped my entire tower and antenna system. Up until this contest my tower was 30' of 45G rotating on top of 80' of 55G with a single guy ring made possible by my friend Richard K0XG who now owns K0XG Rotating Tower Systems. It was the prototype installation for rotating tower on top of tower and worked well for several years, but now needed upgrading. The week before the contest he, K9EGE and KC1XX helped me pull down all my antennas and the rotating sections, then replace them with 50' of new tower with 2 guy rings. This is a lot more stable and allows me to extend the freestanding tower top past the guy ring a little further so I now have 28' of "climbable mast" above it. I can now stack two 50' long boom 11 element 6M antennas the right distance apart like I always wanted to and with the heavier center boom sections they should survive the winter winds too! 

The monster 6M antennas at 105' and 132' play like gangbusters! Nothing like 100' of boom on 6M! I worked a mobile during the middle of the day over 225 miles away on ground wave! Stations 300 miles away were giving me S-9 reports. I was told that there were lots more calling me but the noise level was so horrendous on Sunday I couldn't hear most of them. When K9AKS asked me why I did it, I told him my design goal was to work every dipole and vertical in Chicago (125 miles away)! I love the reactions of skeptical operators when we're rewarded with an easy contact. The high 6M antennas also have enough secondary lobes to be effective on Es as well as forward scatter and they did very well during the openings, especially for double hop. They are too high for the really high angle stuff, so I have a separate antenna much lower on a push-up mast. But even though I understand the science behind arriving Es wave angles, it still amazes me that the signals from a little 12' boom 5el at 18' often equal the stack and sometimes actually surpass it. That 5 element looks like its still on the ground when I'm up on the tower.

In fact all the VHF/UHF antennas seem to hear better 20 feet higher. The improvement on 2M was the most pronounced since I rebuilt the 18XXX driven elements and changed out the power divider and harnesses. I widened the spacing and got them further away from the top 6M antenna by installing a longer mast, putting them at 140' and 154'. I'd always suspected I wasn't really hearing as well as I should on 2M ever since the antennas first went up at this QTH. Now I hear everything, including the terrible noise level we had to the north and west on Sunday, at times S9 even on the higher bands. Even so, with pretty much average tropo conditions I was able to work over 50 grids on 2M, all the way down to EM87! (In all fairness N8UM goes up to the top of the Smokies for the contests). The long boom stacked pairs on 222 through 1296 mounted on H frames in between the two 6M antennas all really worked well too, despite the 903 mast mounted preamp being in the shop. Signals generally got louder as we went up to 432, but dropped off sharply on 903 and 1296. The noise was so bad to the north I had a S5 on 903 and an S3 on 1296 but was still able to make a few contacts in that direction despite it. 

All in all it was the best score I've ever turned in during a VHF contest and so far on 3830 I'm not seeing any SOLP who did better, but time will tell. I had a great time and am looking forward to the CQ WW VHF in July when I can let loose the 8877's and really see what my new antennas can do. I'm not looking forward to the equipment repair bills however! Many thanks to all the CARC, Badger, SMC and GRVARS members who worked me, some just to give me a few more points!  Thanks to Matt and Wyatt at m2 too, for getting me all the antenna parts I needed on time! 

73 de Bob