2005 ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes
02/01/2005 |
K0AWU
Our weather was back to "Minnesota Normal", snow and below zero at night, that is not "Minnesota Nice", in fact that was enough to discourage rovers! There was only one known rover within 200 miles and I never heard him once. Rovers were close to 30% of my score in the September contest.
On Saturday the conditions above 222Mhz were just flat "horrid", but before the contest was over, they had improved enough to where 432 and 1296 were possible at least. No Es or real tropo during the entire contest. I did work Lefty K1TOL, Emil W3EP and a couple others on 6m random meteors or Es bursts ... but they were very brief.
The real highlight of the contest for me, was the very good participation from the northern Minnesota VHF hams. Bryce KI0LE activated EN46 on 6,2,432 and 1296. It was great to be his first of 3 contest Qs on 1296. He spent Friday before the contest building a N6CA 25elem loop yagi and getting it on the tower. Connie W0ANH EN47 was worked on 6,2,432 for the first
contest since he moved north many years ago. Twenty two contest Q's with stations north of my QTH, I think this was the most I have ever worked from the northern grids.
Gary W0GHZ and I worked again on 10Ghz via tropo, with CW signals just above the noise. It was our first WINTER tropo 10Ghz contact on the 155 mile path. Very cool. Looking at weather radar at the time, there was not a return to be seen.
As tough as things were, this was my second highest January contest score since I started keeping score in 1998. The end result was 145 contacts in 67 grids. Thanks for looking toward EN37 guys! -- K0AWU
On Saturday the conditions above 222Mhz were just flat "horrid", but before the contest was over, they had improved enough to where 432 and 1296 were possible at least. No Es or real tropo during the entire contest. I did work Lefty K1TOL, Emil W3EP and a couple others on 6m random meteors or Es bursts ... but they were very brief.
The real highlight of the contest for me, was the very good participation from the northern Minnesota VHF hams. Bryce KI0LE activated EN46 on 6,2,432 and 1296. It was great to be his first of 3 contest Qs on 1296. He spent Friday before the contest building a N6CA 25elem loop yagi and getting it on the tower. Connie W0ANH EN47 was worked on 6,2,432 for the first
contest since he moved north many years ago. Twenty two contest Q's with stations north of my QTH, I think this was the most I have ever worked from the northern grids.
Gary W0GHZ and I worked again on 10Ghz via tropo, with CW signals just above the noise. It was our first WINTER tropo 10Ghz contact on the 155 mile path. Very cool. Looking at weather radar at the time, there was not a return to be seen.
As tough as things were, this was my second highest January contest score since I started keeping score in 1998. The end result was 145 contacts in 67 grids. Thanks for looking toward EN37 guys! -- K0AWU
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