[VHFcontesting] 222 MHz Night

[David Olean]

Hello 222 ops!

I am pretty sure everybody in the northeast is awfully wet from all of 
the rain we have had from Henri plus all the other disturbances that 
have been passing through of late.  All of these storms have kept any 
East Coast tropo from appearing.  Of course, hurricanes can actually 
promote exceptional conditions by drawing warm and very moist air up 
into the more northern areas to mix with cool dry air.  When Henri blew 
in, all of the cooler dry air was off to the east so we missed any tropo 
enhancement. The band is wide open out in the Atlantic however!

So Tuesday is hopefully a drying out period and a good time to exercise 
your 222 MHz gear.  For my part, I have finished a tower mounted preamp 
system on the 222 tower, and have high hopes to swap out my old rotator 
before Tuesday evening as well.  (I have a derrick and pulley system 
installed right now)  Installing the preamp has complicated the antenna 
switching methods I was using. The new preamp has its own feedline 
coming down the tower, and I spent yesterday adding some relays to allow 
me to continue switching to other antennas while still being able to 
listen on these other antennas. I am hoping to install the new mods up 
in the shack today and test it all out before Tuesday night.

Last week was very interesting with several long haul contacts on 222 
MHz to KO4YC in FM17 at 821 km,  WA3EOQ in FM09 at 806 km  and N4SVC in 
EM80 at 1797 km.  The last listed contact was on meteor scatter using 
MSK144 and took all of five minutes to complete. There are about as many 
digital DX modes as there are 222 MHz operators, so what better way to 
learn about them, than to run a sked or two using one of the Digi modes! 
It is easy to coordinate on ON4KST chat page and set something up that 
is a bit beyond your normal range. As local activity dies down later in 
the evening, there is still plenty of time to run a sked or two.  I am 
hoping to make a contact using one of the Q65 modes.

So mark your calendar  for Tuesday August 24. Activity starts up 
whenever you show up, but 2300 UT is a time I shoot for to be active on 
222.100. CU there!

73

Dave K1WHS