[VHFcontesting] CQ WW VHF Contest 2014 Conditions

[James Duffey]

Bruce - You asked:

"I'm curious to hear from others that participated in this past weekends CQ VHF Contest as to propagation conditions experienced on 6 meters…."


I think the conditions were typical of July Es. On Saturday we had an hour long opening to Mexico, but there was only one station on. We had a couple of brief openings of minutes each to Northern CA where we worked a single station during each. We were in motion when these occurred and it was possible that the openings were better, but we missed the rest, but I doubt it. We stopped both times and rotated the beam but there was no more activity.

On Sunday morning, the band opened in fits and spurts about 0930 local, and then full blast to the SE and MW. There was a half hour or so lull and then the band opened again. It was open pretty much full time then until about 15 minutes before the contest ended. It did open to the NW very strongly, so at times we had the NW, MW, and SE all in at once.

We had a couple of double hop openings to FL. 

At times there was a lot of very short QSB, but I don’t think it was in any way out of the ordinary. I think it may have appeared worse as in a contest there is a lot more activity and people are pursuing marginal QSOes, so you stick with a weak station with QSB longer than one would ordinarily do. 

The contest for us was better than last year. - KK6MC 
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KK6MC
James Duffey
Cedar Crest NM