2005 ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes
01/25/2005 |
K2DRH
Saturday dawned cold and snowy after a restless night spent waking frequently to the sound of sustained 40 MPH winds with higher gusts howling through the guy wires. Having already lost the bottom 50 foot boom 6M antenna in early December to an even stronger wind storm, it was amazing I slept at all worrying about whether there was any aluminum left to contest with up there. Had to take that one down in three pieces after it ripped out the center of the boom to mast plate and hung from the truss, flailing in the wind folded up in a triangle. Its a twisted wreck now, sticking out of a foot of snow in the side yard, waiting for parts. Not sure what category of amateur radio fun working on a tower in sub freezing windy weather fits into, but Ive certainly had a ton of it recently. Of course the other one still has the same kind of plate and sits above the 222, 432 and microwave antennas, hence my reason for worry. Guess Ive finally built it big enough.
In future years whenever I complain about a slow January contest, please remind me of 2005, a new low water benchmark for terrible Midwest contest conditions. I like flat conditions for the January Sweepstakes; it gives my station a level playing field so the QSO quantity challenged location on the Mississippi River between Illinois and Iowa has a chance to prevail through multipliers, the true distance scoring reward. But conditions on Saturday were several notches below flat. The snow and wind continued until late afternoon, resulting in periods of almost unbearable snow static. The antennas were oscillating in the wind so much that some stations sounded like they were spin modulated. Turning to the east or west put such a frightening bow in the long booms that I concentrated mostly to the north or south for the first few hours. I hit a wall between 222 and 432 that signals wouldnt penetrate. This wall would gradually lift above 432 as the day went on, but the bands above that were really terrible all night and most of the day on Sunday. There was nothing workable out past Chicago where the snow and windstorm system was still active. Even the Chicago area stations only 100 miles to the east were way down from normal.
The hardy rovers of the Midwest are not easily daunted by ordinary cold and snow, but the blinding whiteout conditions apparently kept the regulars who activate lots of bands in their garages safe from the winds. Rumors of rovers getting antennas torn off their cars by the wind were apparently substantiated when N0DQS got on 2M from home to tell his tale of woe. I didnt work any rovers on Saturday and only heard one rover active to the east on Sunday. This definitely conspired to keep scores lower than usual. Contacts on Saturday were few and hard fought, and the higher bands were almost non-existent in every direction. Normally strong stations were weak even on 2M, and the normally weak ones just werent there. 6M contacts were difficult and I sorely missed the extra gain of the stacked beams. Id installed a mast mount preamp on 6M for the first time in hopes it would compensate for a little of the lost gain, but it failed open the day before the contest and I had to climb up 110 feet to retrieve it in 20 MPH winds and bitter cold. Actually Im really glad it failed when it did since there was no way I wanted to even think about climbing on Saturday!
The one bright spot was Saturday night meteor scatter. Id made several WSJT schedules and stayed up later than Id planned making several more random QSOs to try and make up for a log that was easily 100 Qs and 50 multipliers behind. Random QSOs on WSJT seem to have come into their own, and its not difficult to QSY to other bands. But this and the previous nights disturbed sleep made for a very grumpy Sunday morning after only 3.5 hours between the sheets. Sunday saw another early morning round of good WSJT skeds (one of which I missed because I nodded off in the chair, sorry Russ) and a few more randoms. Sunday tropo on the bands started out slow and tapered off from there. Conditions were better, but still less than flat. The stations were just not there to work on Sunday morning and the slow hours continued well on into the afternoon.
Its really disheartening to tune 2M during a contest and hear nothing in any direction, then call every 15 degrees while turning the antennas completely around the clock on 144.200 with no takers. I kept looking at my running total and shaking my head in disgust. I was slumping from the brutal beating of little sleep and slugging it out in the chair under the most difficult conditions Ive seen since moving to EN41, while my tower muscles ached. Unexpectedly things began to pick up, slowly at first, until there was a steady stream of stations to work during the normal late Sunday afternoon lull. Shaking off the cobwebs wasnt easy but there were Qs to be made up. Conditions improved considerably and the absorption blanket on most of the higher bands lifted, but there was still a marked drop in signals from 903 to 1296 and pretty much nothing at 2304. The points and multipliers were finally going into the log however.
The last hours of the January contest are usually pretty dead with few new stations to work up until maybe the last hour or so. This year 2M seemed loaded with stations from 0000Z right up until the end. It was difficult to work them all since most were clustered right around the call, and a QSY to other bands from anywhere within 30 KHz of 144.200 would result in a lost running frequency. Normally the world pretty much ends plus or minus 10 off the call here except for a few multi-ops, but even the casual contesters were calling. Unfortunately CQing from more than 30 KHz away yielded dramatically slower results and it was necessary to keep running back to the call or near it to attract fresh batches of stations. Still, it was nice to see things spread out a little.
For the last few hours 2M finally came alive with stations trying to make up for lost time. Ive rarely heard this kind of concentrated contest activity since I left EM64, where I often heard lots of stations to the north working the Mid Atlantic up and down the band while I strained to get their attention off the back of their antennas. I could hear stations as far as EN91 to the east, but it was hard to catch them since they were working right into Chicago when they pointed my way. We are just not used to dealing with that kind of congestion out here. Luckily I found several grid multipliers that I could work on multiple bands. 6M was a good place to escape the madness for a while and there were many stations to run the bands with there too. The last half hour was a free for all shootout right on the 2M call, with multiple stations working in all different directions.
73 de Bobtwo -- K2DRH EN41VR
In future years whenever I complain about a slow January contest, please remind me of 2005, a new low water benchmark for terrible Midwest contest conditions. I like flat conditions for the January Sweepstakes; it gives my station a level playing field so the QSO quantity challenged location on the Mississippi River between Illinois and Iowa has a chance to prevail through multipliers, the true distance scoring reward. But conditions on Saturday were several notches below flat. The snow and wind continued until late afternoon, resulting in periods of almost unbearable snow static. The antennas were oscillating in the wind so much that some stations sounded like they were spin modulated. Turning to the east or west put such a frightening bow in the long booms that I concentrated mostly to the north or south for the first few hours. I hit a wall between 222 and 432 that signals wouldnt penetrate. This wall would gradually lift above 432 as the day went on, but the bands above that were really terrible all night and most of the day on Sunday. There was nothing workable out past Chicago where the snow and windstorm system was still active. Even the Chicago area stations only 100 miles to the east were way down from normal.
The hardy rovers of the Midwest are not easily daunted by ordinary cold and snow, but the blinding whiteout conditions apparently kept the regulars who activate lots of bands in their garages safe from the winds. Rumors of rovers getting antennas torn off their cars by the wind were apparently substantiated when N0DQS got on 2M from home to tell his tale of woe. I didnt work any rovers on Saturday and only heard one rover active to the east on Sunday. This definitely conspired to keep scores lower than usual. Contacts on Saturday were few and hard fought, and the higher bands were almost non-existent in every direction. Normally strong stations were weak even on 2M, and the normally weak ones just werent there. 6M contacts were difficult and I sorely missed the extra gain of the stacked beams. Id installed a mast mount preamp on 6M for the first time in hopes it would compensate for a little of the lost gain, but it failed open the day before the contest and I had to climb up 110 feet to retrieve it in 20 MPH winds and bitter cold. Actually Im really glad it failed when it did since there was no way I wanted to even think about climbing on Saturday!
The one bright spot was Saturday night meteor scatter. Id made several WSJT schedules and stayed up later than Id planned making several more random QSOs to try and make up for a log that was easily 100 Qs and 50 multipliers behind. Random QSOs on WSJT seem to have come into their own, and its not difficult to QSY to other bands. But this and the previous nights disturbed sleep made for a very grumpy Sunday morning after only 3.5 hours between the sheets. Sunday saw another early morning round of good WSJT skeds (one of which I missed because I nodded off in the chair, sorry Russ) and a few more randoms. Sunday tropo on the bands started out slow and tapered off from there. Conditions were better, but still less than flat. The stations were just not there to work on Sunday morning and the slow hours continued well on into the afternoon.
Its really disheartening to tune 2M during a contest and hear nothing in any direction, then call every 15 degrees while turning the antennas completely around the clock on 144.200 with no takers. I kept looking at my running total and shaking my head in disgust. I was slumping from the brutal beating of little sleep and slugging it out in the chair under the most difficult conditions Ive seen since moving to EN41, while my tower muscles ached. Unexpectedly things began to pick up, slowly at first, until there was a steady stream of stations to work during the normal late Sunday afternoon lull. Shaking off the cobwebs wasnt easy but there were Qs to be made up. Conditions improved considerably and the absorption blanket on most of the higher bands lifted, but there was still a marked drop in signals from 903 to 1296 and pretty much nothing at 2304. The points and multipliers were finally going into the log however.
The last hours of the January contest are usually pretty dead with few new stations to work up until maybe the last hour or so. This year 2M seemed loaded with stations from 0000Z right up until the end. It was difficult to work them all since most were clustered right around the call, and a QSY to other bands from anywhere within 30 KHz of 144.200 would result in a lost running frequency. Normally the world pretty much ends plus or minus 10 off the call here except for a few multi-ops, but even the casual contesters were calling. Unfortunately CQing from more than 30 KHz away yielded dramatically slower results and it was necessary to keep running back to the call or near it to attract fresh batches of stations. Still, it was nice to see things spread out a little.
For the last few hours 2M finally came alive with stations trying to make up for lost time. Ive rarely heard this kind of concentrated contest activity since I left EM64, where I often heard lots of stations to the north working the Mid Atlantic up and down the band while I strained to get their attention off the back of their antennas. I could hear stations as far as EN91 to the east, but it was hard to catch them since they were working right into Chicago when they pointed my way. We are just not used to dealing with that kind of congestion out here. Luckily I found several grid multipliers that I could work on multiple bands. 6M was a good place to escape the madness for a while and there were many stations to run the bands with there too. The last half hour was a free for all shootout right on the 2M call, with multiple stations working in all different directions.
73 de Bobtwo -- K2DRH EN41VR
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