[VHFcontesting] Time to check out your VHF gear!

[David Olean]

Hello VHF ops.

It is only 11 days until the January VHF Contest. This is the contest 
that separates the men from the boys.  The January Contest is noted for 
some of the coldest and most wintery operating experiences.   Band 
conditions are typically awful and ice and snow can cause all sorts of 
problems. Today is also Tuesday, so it is a perfect time to check out 
your 222 MHz VHF gear prior to the contest.  I find the greatest utility 
of having a specific night for a VHF band is that it concentrates 
activity and allows you to develop a "feel" for how well your setup is 
working. I used the 222 Nights this past Summer to monitor changes that 
I made to the overall system as I was trying to fix some overload 
problems that were hard to trace.  Having many signals available in many 
directions allowed me to zero in on what was wrong and then I could 
monitor things as I fixed them.  Test sets and noise figure meters are 
great, but get you only so far. Listening to real signals and having a 
spectrum analyzer to check out of band signals is a huge advantage.

Normally, I would be QRT for 222 night in mid January, but our last big 
storm was a rain event and our last snow event was about 4" on the 
ground. I can get up to the shack pretty well right now. and the temps 
are reasonable. It is 27 degrees right now. That is relatively balmy for 
Maine in January. My plan is to head up at 6:30 PM local time and fire 
up the generator. I took my solar battery system apart and hauled the 
lithium battery down to the house to keep it warm. That means I need the 
big diesel running to even monitor the bands. Not sure about snow in the 
future. If it holds off I can run 6 thru 432 in the January Contest. 
That is a rarity!

If you have not tried a 222 night yet, the activity gets going around 
222.100 + or - starting about 00:00 UT and goes for at least two hours 
or so. There is considerable activity in the NE, but other areas also 
have activity. Activity in the midwest can go on well past 0200UT.  It 
is a good idea to monitor ON4KST 144/432 Region 2 Chat page. A lot of 
222 ops check in and you can set up a sked with a distant station. You 
never know what might happen. You might make an unbelievable contact 
over some incredible distance! Meteors are possible.  JT65 for tropo 
scatter is viable as well. I have yet to try that.   I just looked at 
the Moon position, and it is rising here just after 0100 UT. Maybe I can 
try a sked with K3SK using the rising moon. He starts seeing the Moon at 
01:45 UT.  That would be interesting. He has four big Yagis and QRO. 
That might be exciting!!

73


Dave K1WHS