[VHFcontesting] Renewing Interest in VHF Contesting

[Brent Casavant]

On Sat, 8 May 2004 N3AWS at aol.com wrote:

> Anyone have any success stories to share about how to attract new blood?

Yes.  It's called Limited Multi (or even Unlimited Multi).

Back in September 1997 a ham friend of mine (N9OU, ex KC5VEI) invited me
to participate with the university's amateur radio club in the VHF
contest.  Bear in mind that I wasn't even a licensed ham at that time:
I was permitted to operate under the supervision of a control operator.
We had a blast operating, and I caught the bug hard (I was probably more
pumped about the following January than anyone else).

So, invite your non-ham friends, or your HF-only ham friends over to
your station for a contest weekend, and help get them on the air.
Help them through the rough spots, and show the HFers that contacts
beyond 30 miles are most certainly possible, and exciting.

This also answers K8CC's comment about the cost involved for someone
to get involved.  If you can find it in yourself to share operating
time and your equipment with someone else, they can get hooked by
VHF contesting with little up-front cost.

Plus, in several areas of the country Limited Multi is an underrepresented
category, and it's really not that hard to post a competitive score.  Heck,
in September 2002 my group posted a top score in this part of the country
with a TS-2000 with modest homebrew 2m and 70cm beams, a 706 and commercial
3-element 6 meter, and a 220 FM rig on a homebrew vertical, all up about
50 feet, with no visibility to the west (blocked by the building we were
in, and in the direction of the bulk of the Twin Cities metro), with no
6m openings, and very poor skills (imagine my embarrasement when I realized
I was trying to establish a CW QSO with a beacon... *blush*).  Our station
and location (and thank God our skills!) have gotten a lot better since then,
but it sure would be nice if our still relatively modest setup (antennas
never higher than 30 feet) caused us to place in the bottom 10% of Limited
Multi scores than in the top 10% in this part of the country.

Thanks,
Brent, KD5EMB

-- 
Brent Casavant			http://www.angeltread.org/
KD5EMB				-.- -.. ..... . -- -...
44 54'24"N 93 03'21"W 907FASL	EN34lv