[VHFcontesting] Taken out of the contest by ICE.

[K3SK at buckwalter.co]

Mother nature’s ice, not the government organization.  😊 

 

I have been VHF contesting for over 40 years and until today I have never been taken out of the competition during a contest by weather. For several years I did the January VHF contest on a Pennsylvania mountain top where the cold froze the rotors to where they wouldn't turn and I climbed the tower and knocked the ice off with a hammer so we could keep contesting (I was young and "less smart" back then). Today, with about 7 hours of contest remaining, the winter storm coming up the east coast went from rain to sleet, to ice, then snow. This pretty much killed any propagation enhancement. I also quickly found out it instantly made my antennas inoperative, ALL OF THEM! 

The first indicator was the 2m PA tripped with high SWR indicator, then almost at the same time the 6m amp did the same. Within 15 minutes I was down on all 5 bands I was operating.

When I decided it was time to give up 3 of the 5 PAs tripped off when the TX was keyed. Below is the measured SWR for each band. These are all normally 1.2 or better. 

50 MHz        3:1
144 MHz       2.6:1
222 MHz       3.5:1
432 MHz       2.5:1
1296MHz      2.1:1 

Sadly, I was on a roll to a new personal all-time January contest high score with 275 QSOs when I was forced out of the game. The only thing positive is my score this year is ~7k points over last January contest

 

 

 

Dave – K3SK

FM07