01/24/2005 | W4SHG Well it was time to tune and test all the VHF+ gear to prepare for the first VHF contest of the year. The W4SHG shack was prepared to contest in the coveted January VHF Sweepstakes 2005. With all the testing completed as of Friday before the event and the finishing touches on the 5.7G portable setup resolved, the W4SHG shack was ready to compete again looking for illusive grids and rovers for this years event.

One problem No one told me that a blizzard was coming which was to dump a foot plus of snow in the Northeast, lock up operations from Virginia to Maine, bring horrific conditions both from a propagation and weather perspective to the Mid Atlantic and Northeast not seen in quite some time if ever.

Where do I start, oh 6 Meters is a good place. My best QSO was to the neighbors down the street television and cordless $2.00 telephone. This was QSLed via a knock on the door indicating I had successfully completed these QSOs. To make this real interesting this was a county police officer. La-dee-dah so I calmed him down chatted with him for a while (Probably missed K3TUF in FN10 because of this darn it) and finally convinced him to take some of my plentiful snap on ferrites home and strategically place them on his coaxial cables and power cords resulting in no more QSOs to the phone or TV. One would think this is good thing however, this was a pretty good QSO considering the conditions I was soon to find on the bands as the winter blizzard of early 2005 came in to have fun with the contesting crowd.

Well considering the fact that the conditions were to kill off almost every sane rover, the event got that much harder having those often visited quiet grids staying quite this event. We did have at least one brave fanatic soul ND3F Brian and N3RCO Andrew were out in the Virginia Beach area trying to keep warm and their antennas useable fighting really the worst Mid-Atlantic conditions I can remember. How can one not communicate on 6 Meters but make a solid QSO on 5.7G. I guess its called snow scatter, a bit difficult for my feeble mind to comprehend but fun no matter. Thanks guys for braving horrific weather to light up the bands a bit from the South. I also managed to catch K3LFO on Sunday and K9OYD good to hear all of you.

Band conditions seemed to be down quite a bit as well as participation. Many of the known clubs were not around as well as the lack of rovers made this contest a real Butt Grinder. With 6 Meters so noisy with auroral sounding flutter and 2 Meters with just loud static, you really needed to love contesting to hang in there and grind along with 9 QSOs an hour or less. Its never really great here but this year it was really pretty slow. On the good side everything worked like a champ, nothing broke, the wind at 30mph did not tear anything up and the 5.7G stuff on the portable tower made 2 QSOs. I find that to be fantastic as usually I blow up gear like this once or twice before I get it in the air.

I decided in the wee hours of Sunday morning to bail out on conventional contesting tactics and attempt some digital mode FSK411 on the call channel 50.260. To my surprise I found my nemesis K2DRH and gave him FM18 on 6 and 2 meters. Like he needed my grid square to beat me handily again by at least an order of magnitude. I also completed 4 other FSK411 QSOs for a total of 6. What a fantastic mode and a demonstration of great ingenuity demonstrated by K1JT for creating this software for us. If you have not tried it do so. Even for modest stations it is exciting, once mastered, to get that state or grid you are missing.

In conclusion I would like to send out my sincerest congratulations to those operators who got on for the first time and gave out some QSOs. Its really great to hear the new blood out and about in these contests.

See everyone in the Spring Sprints from FM08tn and in June from FM18gk here at 67asl in the abyss of Stafford, Virginia.

Respectfully Submitted by
Steve Gilmore -- W4SHG