[VHFcontesting] The Thrill of Victory...and the Agony of Defeat

[Keith Morehouse]

Les Rayburn, N1LF wrote:

I noticed that the skip on 6 meters kept getting
shorter, and on a hunch, I tuned the 910H to
144.200mhz. The band was quite, but the noise level 
started to rise as I listened. Then suddenly I heard a
station calling very loudly.... 
"CQ, CQ, CQ This is Kilo Zero Kilo Echo in Delta Mike
Seven Nine!" I almost fell out of my chair! In a near
panic, I shouted my callsign and grid square into the
microphone. With a great deal of surprise, I heard him
come right back to me. 

***************************

Les, the joys of 2M E are many - congratulations.

6M 'shortening' IS a sign of possible 2M E, as the
ionization gets denser.  BUT - the trick is to look at
WHERE the path is getting short.  What you want to see
is very short skip centered at some distance from your
QTH (500-600 miles ??).  Your goal is to then beam at
that refraction point on 2M, this working *through*
that dense cloud.  If 6 gets real short to/from YOUR
location, some other fortunate soul will be taking
advantage of it, not you - you are too close.  What
you probably had was ANOTHER dense cloud half way
between your QTH and DM79.

This same concept can be used on 6M by monitoring 10M
E paths.  Using the end-point maps available at
vhfdx.net allows one to visualize the E clouds and get
a better handle on where the band *might* be open to.

Fun stuff, for sure !

jay W9RM