[VHFcontesting] First attempt at the September VHF contest

[Tom Mandera]

Since we have a road trip planned to visit some friends this weekend,
and I have the 706, I thought I might give 6m a try for the first time.

I had to make the antenna installation rather expedient, so the 20m
hamstick came off in favor of a 6m vertical whip - no horizontal loops
this time.

I wasn't sure if the vertical would play well on SSB beyond LOS - if 6
has the same polarization skewing that HF does it would work in my
favor.

Then, to make things worse, I cut the whip a bit short, so the SWR is FB
on the FM sub-band, but higher than I'd like down on the SSB portion.

I live in Montana, and we'd be activating DN36, DN37, DN47, DN48, and
DN58 on our trip. (since it looks like the contest won't start until
noon on Saturday, that'd be DN58 at times on Saturday, and the reverse
order on the return trip home Sunday afternoon)

I can solder a chunk back onto the whip and bring the frequency down if
vertical SSB would be worth while, or I can just leave things alone and
monitor FM for the trip instead.

I've never experienced 6m, so I'm not sure what to expect.

I could also run SSB on 2m, but at only 10w and still vertical.  I'm
going to leave the 5/8 wave hooked to the D710 and might try a few 2m FM
contacts at 50w instead.

The GPS and/or GTRANS cable has been acting up in the car, so you might
have better luck watching our progress by looking for KE7VUX-10.

So - solder on the 5cm extension I need, or run it as is and stick to
FM?  I have this suspicion that I won't hear anything no matter what
route I take - there's a lot of space here, without a lot of people.

-Tom Mandera, Helena MT 
KE7VUX (w/ KF7DYZ)