2005 ARRL June VHF Contest
06/18/2005 |
N9DG
Well this one was a mixed bag with the negatives outweighing the positives. Between power line noise, thunderstorms, flat band conditions (except as noted), and the equipment not hitting on all cylinders it was actually a rather disappointing June contest for me.
The tally of pluses:
1. Nice albeit brief 6M opening Saturday evening into 5 land and some XE.
2. A very nice AU opening on Sunday, wow. The AU session added 20 plus grids to my 2M grid totals. It was nice to work a number of the big guns and multiop efforts in the east. It was also pretty amazing just how far south the AU extended. Since I had plenty of power line noise to my NE on 6M I focused on 2M and up for the AU. Unfortunately as good as the AU opening was it still couldn't make up for my rather disappointing results for the rest of the contest.
3. ???
Now the negatives:
1. Rather persistent power line noise in my NE though SW directions with S5-9 noise for about 50% of the time during this contest. This really hurt me in what are normally my best performing directions.
2. Was off the air laying low Saturday evening from ~6PM till Sunday morning, had some lingering T showers in the area that never really did anything but I didn't want to risk taking a lightning hit either. And then to add insult to injury the trace amount of rainfall from them did next to nothing to squelch the power line noise for Sunday.
3. Where was everyone? Only worked 2 stations that were within 50 miles of my QTH. This was the poorest June participation (at least locally) that I can remember. No local rovers either, usually I have a few of them come near enough by me to be able to rack up a bunch of "shoot the fish in the barrel" Q's, - not this time. My Q to multiplier ratio on 2M fell bellow 2:1, I don't believe I've ever had that happen before. Ended up with a respectable number of grids on 2M but I was way down on Q's.
4. "Normal distance" conditions were just plain flat to poor from what I can tell, if it wasn't for the brief 6M opening and the AU my score would have been a total disaster for a June contest. It seemed like I could only hear folks that were 100 or so miles out only if I was pointed at them. Usually I can tell when the bigger stations are operating even if I'm not directly pointing at them, not this time. Rovers 100 miles or more away were unusually hard to work. Same problem with the smaller stations in the metro areas of Chicago and Minneapolis, either I didn't hear them at all or they were hard to work.
5. Also I tried running with sub RX's for each of my 4 bands this time. I did it the quick and dirty way by simply putting T's in the RX IF lines of the transverters. Yes I know that is a no-no; needless to say I had some pretty bad impedance mismatches, also had some in the shack EMI related problems with it. Didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I need to revisit the whole design approach to improve it. Also when the sub RX's were doing what they were supposed to be doing I had a somewhat hard time telling exactly what audio was coming from where.
Oh well, - if every contest went great and the gear always worked a 100% of the time VHF contesting would get boring.
73, Duane -- N9DG
The tally of pluses:
1. Nice albeit brief 6M opening Saturday evening into 5 land and some XE.
2. A very nice AU opening on Sunday, wow. The AU session added 20 plus grids to my 2M grid totals. It was nice to work a number of the big guns and multiop efforts in the east. It was also pretty amazing just how far south the AU extended. Since I had plenty of power line noise to my NE on 6M I focused on 2M and up for the AU. Unfortunately as good as the AU opening was it still couldn't make up for my rather disappointing results for the rest of the contest.
3. ???
Now the negatives:
1. Rather persistent power line noise in my NE though SW directions with S5-9 noise for about 50% of the time during this contest. This really hurt me in what are normally my best performing directions.
2. Was off the air laying low Saturday evening from ~6PM till Sunday morning, had some lingering T showers in the area that never really did anything but I didn't want to risk taking a lightning hit either. And then to add insult to injury the trace amount of rainfall from them did next to nothing to squelch the power line noise for Sunday.
3. Where was everyone? Only worked 2 stations that were within 50 miles of my QTH. This was the poorest June participation (at least locally) that I can remember. No local rovers either, usually I have a few of them come near enough by me to be able to rack up a bunch of "shoot the fish in the barrel" Q's, - not this time. My Q to multiplier ratio on 2M fell bellow 2:1, I don't believe I've ever had that happen before. Ended up with a respectable number of grids on 2M but I was way down on Q's.
4. "Normal distance" conditions were just plain flat to poor from what I can tell, if it wasn't for the brief 6M opening and the AU my score would have been a total disaster for a June contest. It seemed like I could only hear folks that were 100 or so miles out only if I was pointed at them. Usually I can tell when the bigger stations are operating even if I'm not directly pointing at them, not this time. Rovers 100 miles or more away were unusually hard to work. Same problem with the smaller stations in the metro areas of Chicago and Minneapolis, either I didn't hear them at all or they were hard to work.
5. Also I tried running with sub RX's for each of my 4 bands this time. I did it the quick and dirty way by simply putting T's in the RX IF lines of the transverters. Yes I know that is a no-no; needless to say I had some pretty bad impedance mismatches, also had some in the shack EMI related problems with it. Didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I need to revisit the whole design approach to improve it. Also when the sub RX's were doing what they were supposed to be doing I had a somewhat hard time telling exactly what audio was coming from where.
Oh well, - if every contest went great and the gear always worked a 100% of the time VHF contesting would get boring.
73, Duane -- N9DG
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