[VHFcontesting] Getting beginners interested in VHF Contesting

[James Duffey]

Hey Eric - Nice to hear from you on this topic. I was not advocating that everybody operate with all homebrew equipment. 

Nothing wrong with commercial antennas, in fact I have a Cushcraft 13B2 that I rove with on occasion. It was given to me. I just like to build my own antennas, and show other people how to build their own.  Up to 432 MHz at least, there are several good beam designs that work well as built with no testing or tuning required, nor special tools or instruments, just careful measurements. Sure you can tweak a bit more out of them with a bit of test gear, or build antennas with slightly higher gain with some testing and tuning, but for the beginner, better is enemy of good enough. The simple designs should be enough to get them on the air quickly, cheaply and get them hooked.  

I have given several talks on VHF contesting and roving over the past year and a half. I always take a few antennas to show and people are always amazed that simple homebrew antennas like the WA5VJB designs are available and work well. I always get comments when I show the WA5VJB antennas like, is that all there is to it? And hey, I can build that. My favorite: Does that work as well as an Arrow? The guy with the 706/7000/FT100 or whatever usually uses it on 2M and 70cm FM and that is it. If we can get those guys on the weak signal modes, which the simple homebrew antennas they can do without much investment, then we can hook some new blood into contesting. Even getting the 706 guys who use loops to switch to beams would help a lot. But getting guys on loops from verticals is a big step, if they do it for a contest. 

At 6M, the N2MH version of the Moxon is easy to build from common materials and is a great performer compared to the loop or dipole that the guy may have been using. Again just careful lmeasurements are required and pretty much all the parts can be purchased locally.

I like the notion of distance scoring used in at least one contest and I think that if a guy uses computer logging, like Roverlog, the distances are calculated and scores calculated with no additional input from the user, so it really isn't any more complicated. The Spring Sprints will use distance scoring so we can all see what that is like. 

For those on the list that hadn't noticed yet, Eric has one of the greatest calls for VHF contesting there is. He is also one of the premier rovers in the Rocky Mountain Division and does a bang up job on 10 bands from that many or more grids, even in January.  - Duffey