[VHFcontesting] 222 Night and possible aurora

[David Olean]

Hello VHFers

You know the drill. It is Tuesday and you should be applying RF wax to 
your feedlines to get ready for 222 Activity Night. This evening 
promises to be a special evening for a bunch of reasons. Reason #1 is 
that Terry, W8ZN will be at his remote hideaway in the hills of FM09 and 
will be making noise with his 1500 watt Larcan amplificator.  From 
there, he can work the midwest as well as a fair distance down south 
too. As if that was not reason enough for the East Coast & Midwest boys 
to get on and make noise, I have it on good authority that W1ZC in Mason 
NH will be on after a long hiatus due to water filling up his yagi 
feedline . He has a new antenna and I am sure that he wants to work as 
many stations as possible to check out the new antenna.  Reason #3 is 
that there may be a pile of plasma similar to what the ghost busters 
were busting, heading for the Earth and it is scheduled to reach us late 
this evening. My advice to all is to not give up at 9 o'clock, but hang 
around in hopes of catching some aurora.  I hear that there was an 
aurora late Sunday evening. Not sure if it made it to 222, but the 
latest stream is more lined up with the Earth, so please pay attention 
this evening. I also hear that N1DPM has his new 222 yagi up on his 
recently revised tower, and I am sure that Fred wants to make a few 
contacts to check out his antenna. The return loss is so low on Fred's 
antenna, that he is getting nose bleeds from it.   So Tuesday is a very 
special night it seems!

For my part, I need to get a 144 yagi up on some sort of pole so I can 
monitor that band to check for auroras. I'll be working on that today in 
between a few other VHF projects.  I made some progress on my fallen 144 
MHz tower that has been hung up in trees about 35 ft off the ground 
since last Summer.  I removed a largish white pine yesterday after re 
routing a few guy wires, and managed to drop the whole tower so it is 
now only 12 ft off the ground, and wedged against another huge white 
pine.  Now I can remove many of the cables, power dividers, and yagis 
that were previously un reachable, and I can now saw up what remains of 
the Rohn 45.  That thing is UGLY!

There is another exciting bit of 222 MHz news for this evening, as KA6U 
will be blazing away on 222 EME from North Dakota between 2300 and 0000 
UT looking for contacts.  Years ago, in the 1980's, I worked Ron K0ALL 
in North Dakota on SSB meteor scatter and it was my easiest 220 MS 
contact by far.  We completed in under 2 minutes and the burst lasted 
more than a minute. It was the largest meteor burn on 220 MHz that I 
ever heard and it was over a 1300 mile path. Ron and I rag chewed on 
that burn!  Contrast that with today where we can get full calls and a 
report on a 0.3 second ping using FSK441 or MSK144!  I will be listening 
skyward between 2300 and 0000 UT for another N Dakota QSO.  EME on 222 
is a hoot and easily done with two small yagis or one big yagi. I have 
worked single yagi stations on their moonrise, so start thinking about 
how you can add to your state and grid totals with EME.  KA6U is now 
traveling around the entire US with 144, 222, 432 and 1296 setups!

Gotta go. I hope to see many stations on 222 this evening.

73

Dave K1WHS