[VHFcontesting] Back from K1WHS - My Reflections on 2007 ARRL UHF

[JT Croteau]

I only have to ask one thing..

Where was everybody in the North East?  It seemed to me that quite a
few regulars along with some (many) rovers were no where to be found
on the bands.  Has anyone else noticed this or are we the only ones?

We called it quits a couple hours ago as it was simply not worth the
cost of diesel fuel to power the generator when only making 1 to 2
QSOs per hour (if that!).  We only operated for a total of ~10 hours.
Our first break came three hours after the start when we noticed the
temp on the generator creeping up to over 200 degrees.  It was quite
warm on the hill and QSO rates had dropped considerably so we figured
it'd be a good time to stop for dinner so we shut everything down so
the generator could cool off.  We returned about two hours later to
find the same lack of activity as we left it earlier.  Our last break
of the day occurred at roughly 10pm (EST) as activity again showed
little hopes of improving.  We retired to our tents hoping that
activity would be better in the morning.  At 6:30am we fired things up
and had a couple good runs with some rovers worked on Saturday who
were now in new grids along with a few other folks but, overall,
activity quickly fizzled out.  When we decided to call it quits early
and do some tower maintenance instead, I had been calling CQ on
432.110 for and hour and a half with no bites and 222 was pretty much
the same.

Two things surprised me the most.  It seemed that quite a few stations
who normally run all bands were having technical difficulties and were
only able to operate on one or two bands.  Additionally, there seemed
to be quite a few rovers missing this year.

Last year K1WHS scored over 122K points but this year we failed to
break 23K!  Granted, we took a fair amount of breaks but I seriously
doubt, had we been on full-time, we'd manage to score as well as we
did last year.  However, it is possible that we simply goofed on our
timing and missed all the folks we needed.  I'm anxious to hear the
reports come in from other North East stations.

K1WHS Preliminary, and Depressing, Totals
132 Q's over 69 Grids

However, a bad day contesting is better than no contesting.  I still
had a blast and always enjoy my time on the hill.

-- 
JT Croteau, N1ESE - Manchester, NH