[VHFcontesting] CQ Test New England Perspective

[David Olean]

Hello Paul,
    This is very interesting! It is always interesting to hear reports from 
around the country. Things can be so different depending on ur location! For 
me, Saturday was the big day. Sunday was nothing but a grind with little to 
show for the time spent on six meters. Art, K1BX came over to operate six 
meters for the weekend. I had just put the finishing touches on the 
refurbished antenna system. I had removed the old rusty tower and replaced 
it with a new Rohn 45, then stuck all the existing yagis back on a few feet 
higher. They all can now rotate. The tower grew from 90 to 100 ft. I had 
also done some work to the amplifier, and wanted to see if he could break 
it. It all worked fine BTW. Art ended up working 796 Qs and 179 grids on 
six. (Raw score..not checked for goofs)
    Saturday started out great. I finished work on the tower that morning, 
and turned on the rig to hear a few European stations coming in. I worked a 
few on CW that morning including France, Spain and Sardinia, had to quit to 
get a few things done, and hoped that conditions would hold for a good day 
in the US later on. It sure did, as the band was open at 1800 UT up thru 
0500 UT when Art quit for some sleep. The band was REALLY hopping between 
2200 and 0000 UT. His 50 MHz hourly rate was as follows:
1800    87/hr
1900    28
2000    38
2100    47
2200    139
2300    144
0000    79
0100    67
0200    45
0300    21
0400    14
0500      0! We went to sleep!!
Sunday we were back at it at 1000 UT after a 4 hour "nap". but the band 
never really got going well to any area. The hourly rate never exceeded what 
we did at 0400 the night before! 14 Qs per hour was the best rate on Sunday 
for any hour!! There were hours with single digits. We were almost skunked 
for one hour! My impression was that it was open to a small area for very 
short times. Many QSOs were never completed as the band continually dropped 
out! Some of the contacts were made on SSB iono scatter too. (I am sure we 
had worked many areas out as well.)   Saturday, on the other hand, went from 
OK at the start, to great for a short period of time. Any time you are 
working near 150 Qs per hour, you have admit it is good. A look at the main 
grid fields will show what we did from Northern New England.  Europe was in 
again that Saturday afternoon, but we missed most of it. Art was too busy 
looking West for grids and Qs. He did eventually work a few in Portugal, but 
missed many others. I don't think we heard anything from the Caribbean. 
There was no Eastward DX propagation on Sunday heard here.

Fields worked:
IM     2
GN    5
FN    31
FM    16
EM    75 !!
EL     10
EN    29
DM   11
CM    0
CN    0
DN    0
    I am sorry I missed the PNW! We were skunked! Last year it seemed that 
everything was in here at some point, for the CQ Contest. This year was very 
spotty out past single hop range. I am not complaining, however! It was 
still a very fun time on six meters. Any comparisons to last year are 
unfair.

73
Dave K1WHS


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Kiesel" <k7cw at yahoo.com>
To: <vhfcontesting at contesting.com>; <pnwvhfs at googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2007 3:45 PM
Subject: [VHFcontesting] CQ Test PNW Perspective


> Saturday was a general shutout for us, with the
> exception of KL7 stations (KL7NO had an exceptionally
> strong signal) in the evening and QSOs with local
> grids.
>
> Sunday was different. We got a scattering of grids in
> the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains regions. We had
> one concentrated opening to the area south of the
> Great Lakes, which was what saved the contest for us.
> The rest of the contacts were to local grids and a
> couple of meteor scatter contacts to California.
>
> Later in the Sporadic-E season, the propagation tends
> to favor higher latitude grids. The results fitted the
> mold this year, as well.
>
> Grids worked in each field:
>
> CM - 1
> CN - 12
> CO - 2
> DM - 3
> DN - 6
> EM - 2
> EN - 22
> FM - 1
> FN - 3
>
> I can hardly wait till next year.
>
> 73,
> Paul, K7CW
>
>
>
> 
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