[VHFcontesting] 222 Activity Night

[David Olean]

Hello 222 folks ( and those who really want to be 222 folks but have yet 
to make the plunge and get on the band)

This Tuesday promises to be an interesting evening. The Hepburn map 
shows some elevated tropo enhancement from central New York and Toronto 
out to Illinois. The northeast is not looking great, but it is not 
really bad either.  The big news is that KA6U will be going to the 
Florida/Georgia border at the end of the week, but he will also be on 
222 EME  from EL87 on Tuesday night as a warm up. If you look at the 
Moon's position, it will be just about due South in the middle of the 
activity evening. The declination is quite low and that means that it is 
low in the sky all evening. An interesting experiment for anyone with a 
222 yagi laying around doing nothing is to stick it on a pole and tilt 
it up about 22 degrees. With the Moon due South, all you have to do is 
set the elevation and then just turn the azimuth as the Moon traverses 
the sky. At 2330 UT the Moon is at 180 degrees here in Maine, so the 
elevation stays  between 25 and 20 degrees until just after 01:30 UT.

I am tempted to point some extra yagis up and see what I can hear!  When 
KA6U is QRV, all of the big 222 ops show up and exercise their EME gear. 
WA4NJP will be on with his 36 ft dish and polarity switching. K7KQA will 
be on from Washington state, and I think VE6TA will be on from Alberta 
with his dish. N0AKC a 222 mHz WAS holder will be on as well with his 
array. There will be no lack of stations to listen for.  The weather 
promises to be OK in New England with no wind or driving rain, so prop 
up that 222 MHz yagi against the chicken coop right after you feed the 
chickens and be prepared for excitement.

Activity starts at about 2300 UT or 7 PM and goes to about 9:30 or 10 PM 
0200 UT.  I monitor ON4KST (region 2 144/432MHz) and also monitor the 
HB9Q 222 MHz chat page for EME.

73

Dave K1WHS