[VHFcontesting] 222 MHz Activity Night Summary

[David Olean]

Hello VHFers

It was raining lightly and has been cloudy all day, but with not much 
wind.  I was up at the shack at 22:30 and noted that the W3CCX beacon 
was very weak. I noted pretty extreme QSB on many signals. I think 
northern New England was suffering from really bad condx that affected 
even local signals. Interestingly, WA3EOQ who is at 502 miles was a 
normal strength. I should note that normal is just barely copyable. I 
needed a couple of repeats to complete the contact. Still the extreme 
variations of closer in stations was not that much of a problem on the 
long path. W2BYP varied in strength from 59 down to about 5x3 in deep 
fades on SSB.  Stations to the west had relatively decent conditions 
from what I heard.

Stations worked

KC1V FN31 cw, VE2XX FN25 ssb, K1DY FN54 ssb, WZ1V (Good Buddy Ron) FN31 
ssb, KC1V FN31 on ssb, N1LHP FN42 ssb, K1PXE FN31 ssb, WW1Z FN42 ssb, 
WA1MBA FN51 ssb, WA1NLG FN41 ssb,  W9KXI FN12 ssb, W1AUV FN32 CW, N1JEZ 
FN44 ssb, N1GLT FN42 ssb, W2BYP FN13 SSB, K1FMS (EX N1PPM) FN32 ssb, 
W1AIM FN34 ssb, WA1PBU FN42 ssb, WA3EOQ FM09 cw,  NX9O EM84, MSK144, 
K9MRI EN70 MSK144.

I did a fair amount of rag chewing this evening, and that was fun. Note 
that almost all contacts were SSB. I made no FT8 contacts this evening. 
I tried with  W2BYP but the difference between my timing errors and 
W2BYP's errors, I could not decode him even though he was quite loud on 
FT8. He called me on SSB and was loud on voice mode.  NX9O wanted to try 
some MSK144 later on and we ran a sked and worked on a 935 mile path. 
Also got Joe, K9MRI  from EN70 in  the log as well on MSK144. A try with 
AA9MY did not pan out. Better luck next time. The Orionids meteor shower 
peaks in 4 or 5 days. That can be a pretty good shower.

I missed a bunch who were on. Good Buddy Ron worked a bunch of folks I 
did not find this time around.  I did see that AJ6T made six contacts 
from the Nashville area, and he was pretty happy. WA3EOQ seemed to be 
doing very well too, working quite a ways out west.  W2BYP worked in to 
the midwest as well, so I think it was a good time to be on the band, 
with fair conditions that allowed some very nice contacts.  I was happy 
that I made my first trip up the road over the completed culvert. I had 
4 yards of 2" stone delivered this week and we spread it over the road 
there and it looks a rides great!

73

Dave K1WHS