[VHFcontesting] K1DY January Contest

[Bill Olson]

So I guess most know my 110ft  tower came down just before Xmas in that "bomb cyclone" storm. After several inches of rain loosened everything up, 70mph winds blew a tree on one set of guys ant that was that.. I have 80 foot trees around me so the only thing I could think of to "get something" on the air, was to lash my 2 element 6 meter rover antenna to the shop and point it southwest (basically pointed at all the USA considering the pattern of a 2 el beam), and hope for some e-skip. Still running 300 watts, that didn't change.. Well really not any e-skip during the times I was on, so no BIG DX as I had hoped for, hah hah. All my Q's were on FT-8, though I looked for SSB stations regularly on the "low end".

Final tally for maybe 5 hours operating time:

14 QSO's in 8 grids. (worked all 6 New England states actually)
Total score, 112
wahoo! Still it was a challenge and because of that pretty much fun!

On 50.313MHz there were meteor pings coming in ALL the time. Sometimes the screen was filled with them, of course, too short to decode. Made me think making skeds on MSK144 would probably have netted some neat stuff, but I guess I wasn't THAT motivated.

Plan is to get something temporary up as soon as I can for 6,2,220,432.. and deal with replacing the big tower when it warms up..

bill, k1DY in FN54JQ Maine