[VHFcontesting] The 222 Night Wrap up for January 16, 2024

[David Olean]

I just got back from the shack and had an interesting walk down the 
hill. Not that going up was all that un interesting!!  Still I was 
pretty excite to see some bobcat tracks that followed my tracks up the 
hill for about half the distance.  The tracks started at the bottom of 
the hill coming on to the trail just inside the woods line, and they 
went along right in my tracks that I made when I walked up at about 6 
PM. The tracks were very fresh. The snow had stopped sometime after 8 PM 
local time, so I assume that the bobcat came sashaying along right 
around then. It was interesting that the tracks were right on top of my 
tracks almost all the time. By the look of the spacing, it was a big 
bobcat, maybe 24-28" long. When I got home I looked up the track type 
and it was obvious that it was not a dog, coyote, or a red fox.  It 
resembled a cat print but was way too big for a regular cat. I found a 
few spots where a pair of deer had been walking as well. Those tracks 
were full of snow, unlike the bobcat tracks.

My new 12 volt computer is running very well in the cold. It comes on 
and works fine. The room temp started at 24 degrees. It was 68 degrees 
when I left to walk home a bit after 9 PM.  I checked the 222 beacons at 
23:30 UT,  when I got things turned on. K2DLL was very weak and watery 
from FN23, and W3CCX in FN20 on 222.060 was pretty weak as well, and 
only peaking at 10 dB max. In warmer wx it hits 30 dB on the panadaptor 
quite often. So things seemed bleak. I saw some bad news on the ON4KST 
chat page that Good Buddy Ron WZ1V was all iced up and had high VSWR.  
He did not get on for the evening. Neither did Pete, K1PXE. If GB Ron 
was iced up, I'll bet Pete had icing as well.  I checked and had 21 QSOs 
by about 0200 UT.  Trying to recall all by memory is hard but here is my 
list:

K1ZK        SSB        FN34  Good copy on SSB.
W1AUV    CW        FN32
WA1RKS    CW        FN32
K1FSY        SSB        FN31  Much QSB
W1AIM        SSB        FN34
W9KXI        SSB        FN12  Much QSB at times
WA3NUF         SSB    FN20  Much QSB
KC3BVL        SSB        FN20  Ditto
WA1MBA        SSB    FN51
WA1NLG        FT8    FN41
K1RZ                FT8    FM19  Very loud from FM19 up to about +19
N1GLT            SSB    FN42
K2AEP            SSB    FN32  his beam stuck South.
N2JMH            FT8        FN13
K3SK        EME Q65        FM07  -20
VE6TA        EME Q65  Alberta.
N2OA            FT8        FN03  pretty gud sigs.
W2BYP        FT8        FN13  Very loud at +27
WA3EOQ        CW      FM09
K1FMS            SSB        FN32

I forgot somebody on the list.  I also heard AA2SD but could not 
complete on SSB. The QSB did not help at all.  I heard him twice and 
then lost him in the QSB. I heard another station in FN20 around the 
same time, but could never get his call on SSB either. It was quite 
frustrating. Also heard was W6TCP in California via the Moon route.

A few observations from my end of the paths to the SW. The storm was 
winding through and it was snowing fairly hard here at first. All the 
signals had severe QSB. K1FSY went down to almost the noise level at one 
point. WA3NUF, who is never weak, managed to drop down so much on SSB at 
one point that it was difficult to copy Phil on SSB. This is just about 
unheard of in my experience. Then later on, I tried with Howard WA3EOQ 
at a much greater distance, and we completed easily on CW. So what gives 
with the WA3EOQ path. It is a much longer path and seems to suffer less 
from deep fades.  I listened after my QSO and K1FMS also worked WA3EOQ. 
There was a QSB peak here and Fred also got the same peak at his place  
140 miles away!  That stuff always gets me to thinking.

The walk down the hill was much colder and windier than my walk up 
earlier. With all the snow, it was rather slippery.  I went slowly. It 
was great to get back to a warm house!

73

Dave K1WHS