[VHFcontesting] 222 Activity Night summary K1WHS

[David Olean]

We had a cold front move through the NE on Monday night, and Tuesday 
greeted some pretty high winds as the Sun came up.  It was a nice day 
and the wind blew away all the black flies, so you could work outside 
without getting carried away by those little buggers. Unfortunately, 
those winds also blew away any chance of good conditions on the VHF 
bands. Very low humidity and a turbulent and unstable atmosphere meant 
that conditions plummeted.

I was in the shack around 3:30 PM. I checked the band, and the K2DLL 
beacon in FN23 was very weak and watery. I could tell that 222 Activity 
night would be a struggle.  So I got on 222 before 7 PM and my first QSO 
was W1XR in FM19. He called on CW and was 549 while my antenna was aimed 
out west in the direction of W9KXI! I turned the beam south about 25 
degrees and Jim was 579!  I thought about switching to SSB but 
hesitated. I was glad that I did, because W1XR soon started dropping in 
strength and pretty soon was weak and watery with lots of multi path 
evident. I knew that I was in for a rough night. I called lots of CQs 
with the beam west. W1GHZ answered one of them. While we were in the 
midst ofv the QSO, I turned the antenna northwest to about 315 degrees, 
histrue heading, but Ilost him!. I turned the antenna back to 250 
degrees and then could finish the contact. Yes it was a weird evening. 
Paul had his yagis aimed generally SW.  We bounced off of some mountain 
chain like the Catskills.  A bit after 2300 UT I was called by WZ1V and 
I could hear a few other callers under Ron. One was K1PXE, and the other 
signal was KC3BVL in Philadelphia at 325 miles. He had a great signal on 
SSB. I wonder if it was a tropo peak, but it seemed to be quite long 
lasting.  A try with Howard WA3EOQ was disheartening. He barely heard me 
in the noise all the time. I heard nothing from him. Right after that he 
worked K1PXE and WZ1V and they all noted that signals between extreme 
western Maryland and Connecticut were pretty good.

I was seeing that many stations outside of the northeast were on and 
making noise. K9MRI, AA9MY, AJ6T, W5EME, N9BNN, N8WNA, N1GC and others 
were all there and making some noise.  That is great and will encourage 
more activity across the country. K9MRI made quite a few QSOs!

Others on that I heard and worked were N2JMH, VE2XX, W1AIM, W1FKF, and 
WA1T.   Things folded at about 0100 UT.  I hung around making calls on a 
dead band until WA3EOQ came back on the chat page and we tried another 
attempt over the 500+ mile path. Initial results were even worse. He 
noted that I was even weaker than earlier in the evening.  We kept at it 
until at one point, my signal popped up to 559 and I heard his 95 watts 
of CW just come barely out of the noise fortwo full 30 second sequences! 
We finally made the grade under less than good conditions.  I ended up 
with 11 different contacts I think.  Somehow, I worked K1PXE twice.  I 
also worked WZ1V twice, once on SSB and once on FT8. Ron and I both saw 
multiple signals of each other on FT8. Some of the traces were vertical 
on the waterfall, but others were skidding sideways at a high rate of 
speed. Lots of doppler from something. Is it aircraft, or anomalies in 
the atmosphere?   It was a great night despitethe prop conditions. The 
gear worked great. The shack was cozy, and the neat contacts were icing 
on the cake.

Thanks to all for getting on.

Dave K1WHS