[VHFcontesting] 222 MHz Night

[David Olean]

Hi VHFers

I just looked at the Hepburn tropo map and cringed. There is no evidence 
of any good tropo openings showing up anywhere in the country except in 
Florida and the Gulf Coast for almost a week! Now we all know that the 
weather forecasters are not always right, but it looks like any chance 
for tropo has left the building for sure.

My simple analysis for good tropo periods here in northern New England 
came up with August 10- Sept 15 and beyond those dates....not so much.  
So here we are on October 11/12 and we will not have any help from 
Mother Nature to make some long and fantastic contacts on 222 MHz. We 
must rely only on our station ability to make those fantastic contacts 
over long distances. Back in the 1960's when Sam Harris ran the QST 
World Above VHF column, he constantly bullied his readers to improve 
their station. He coined the phrase about your antenna surviving the 
winter, (it wasn't big enough.)  He also had a great quote about 
feedlines. "If your feedline loss is over 1 dB, FIX IT".  I will be on 
222 MHz tonight starting a bit before 2300 UT (7 PM local time) on 
222.100 MHz. These activity periods are a great way to gauge how well 
your station is working after you make changes to improve things. Is 
your feedline loss over 1 decibel?  I remember fine tuning my homebrew 
2304 setup, and by just trimming up jumper cables between subassemblies 
and PAs, I eliminated almost 5 dB of losses!  The 222 Activity nights 
are a great way to spend serious time evaluating your setup. You can 
test your antenna pattern. You can do A-B tests with different preamps. 
Or you can just hob nob with all your like minded VHF friends.  I always 
enjoy the "hob-nobbing" aspect af 222 night.  I should note though that 
Good Buddy Ron, WZ1V, sez that he has no friends!

One of my goals this evening is to try an impossible path using Q65 
digital mode.  I have always been underwhelmed by FT8 on VHF. In my 
opinion, it is a convenient mode, but it delivers little in the way of 
enhancing what you can work on VHF CW with good ears. Q65 should be a 
lot better for pulling weak signals from the noise. I am thinking that 
K3SK and I should try a Q65 sked. At 575 miles, we have yet to hear 
anything either way! The same holds true for the guys in Ohio. I would 
love to try that path with K8ZR or KE8FD and others in the eastern EN grids!

This past week, I picked up a Millen grid dip oscillator from a local 
auction. I need another GDO like a hole in the head, but the Millen unit 
is a remarkable design and I have always wanted one to admire.  When I 
was picking up the GDO I noted that a number of items had received no 
bids. I offered $10 for a 24 year collection of Electric Radio magazine 
and took that home as well. Electric Radio is a fantastic magazine with 
articles about old vintage radio gear from the age of vacuum tubes and 
wooden front panels! So I was reading a few issues out of the 24 year 
collection, and noted one very prolific author. The name Chuck Teeters, 
W4WEH, stuck in my head. Where did I hear that name before? Then it 
dawned on me. In 1968, I was a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Army and getting 
all that great GI training. I spent the Summer at Ft Monmouth and one of 
my instructors was Chuck Teeters.  We learned all about microwave and 
UHF tropo scatter systems. It was a great Summer! Sadly, W4WEH has long 
passed on. The scary part is that I got to thinking about my friends in 
that class. There were 16 of us in total.  The first two guys I looked 
up have also passed away recently, so I stopped looking and checked 
myself for any signs of life. I detected movement and am now on my next 
project of re vamping the shack setup to accommodate the 21st century. I 
have to fit in a monitor or two, plus re locate all the rotator control 
boxes to be accessible from one spot. I have the band decoder system 
working great and will have 144, 222, and 432 running from the same 
position very soon.  I never got to checking out the MW antennas this 
fall, as my generator problems took up much of my time. They will all 
connect up easily to the band decoder. I can't wait!!

Enough of this drivel. Remember that tonite is 222 night.  The wx in New 
England is great. The rest of the country looks pretty good too with the 
xception of Indiana and Michigan with some rain coming in. So fire up 
the gear and strap yourself in for a nice evening of 222 MHz fun.

73

Dave K1WHS