2008 ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes
01/21/2008 |
K2DRH
This was the coldest January VHF test I can remember, with temperatures well into the minus digits at night and mostly single digits during the days. Propagation indicators were dismal and the cold brought out noise sources Ive never even heard before. The noise to the west was horrible the whole time, sometimes over S9. I couldnt hear the K3SIW beacons 100 miles way on 903 and above at all, a rare occurrence. My 2304 preamp quit working a day before the contest in the bitter cold and unlike last Januarys insanity I let discretion be the better part of valor and refused to climb in the 20MPH wind to fix it. It was so cold I had to over voltage my 1296 preamp to get it started, and my 2M preamp relays didnt want to play well all of the time either. Otherwise the equipment hung in there well.
We had three bad ice storms in Dec, but my antennas came through all OK except that I had to climb and pop out a dozen or so crushed loops on the 902-3456 loopers from falling ice from the antennas above. Luckily it was 40+ degrees one day after Christmas. I lost a power supply right before the contest to stupidity (shorted an external transistor when I dropped something behind it), but I had plenty of capacity to spare. Im still unhappy with the 222 performance, although I still have no idea why yet.
On Saturday the conditions were dismal at best. Most of the afternoon I was barely able to work out more than 200 miles. 2M seemed especially depressed, but so were the bands above 432. The evening got better when I hooked up with KC VHF Grid Bandits KB9VSL and WB0NQD in EM29 and worked up to 1296. Ive been trying with these guys for months on 1296 and we finally broke the barrier. Had a few good 400-500 mile shots to EM56, 66, even down to EM54 and 55 around sunset, but they were short lived and didnt extend above 2M. Not many stations down that way were looking north to work unfortunately. It was a frustrating day and the antennas were moving slow. The extreme cold really slows them down and voltage drops when current goes way up. Moving them was taking about 50% longer and whatever direction I was facing at the time it was inevitable someone would call me off the back, then have trouble hearing me! I was really depressed when I looked at the score at the end of the night, it was way lower than normal.
WSJT was awesome! Lots of stations made skeds and we completed most of them, a few by slightly running over into the next sked. Why some stations feel a need to repeat the previous sequence instead of going on the next one like they are supposed to I have no idea! One local multi had their clock time off by a good 10 seconds making randoms a lot more difficult than they had to be. And two multis just couldnt seem to hear me on 2M despite good strong signals from them almost every sequence. K1TEO and I still do 15 sec sequences with Ver 4 of the program, but I decode in version 6. He hears me EVERY sequence despite low power and we worked 6M in two minutes flat, about 3 minutes with QSY instructions! We did both bands in 6 minutes! And its almost always like that with us, under 10 minutes. Wish they all were like that! We think Joe needs to bring back 15 sec sequences in the new version, if only just for us! Ive tried this with a few other stations before too with great success, but nobody else wants to run both versions now. 30 seconds wastes rox and time. K1JT heard me every sequence with 30 sec sequences and we took 11 minutes to work both bands. Randoms were plentiful and I got to sleep way too late.
Sunday stared out similar to Saturday with really depressed conditions but got better as the day warmed up from minus 10 to almost plus 10! The higher bands got better too and I found that despite the lack of mast mounted preamp I could actually hear on 2340 despite 90of 1-5/8 and another 50 of 1/2 inch superflex. Must be the deep freeze keeping the noise temperature down (I know, it really doesnt work that way)!
There werent many opportunities to work 2304 and 3456 since there is exactly two stations within a 150 miles of me with the capability (one has only 3456 and the other was not on in this contest). 903 and 1296 are almost as bad. I wont work several adjacent grids (or often even my own) on any of these bands unless the rovers go there. I only heard one rover within 150 miles with 2.3 and 3.4, and one other with 2304. Most of the stations available for me to work are out 200 miles or more, even the rovers. So when I try way too hard to work you on these two bands, now you know why!
Matter of fact I logged exactly 3 rovers the whole contest. Too darn cold to rove! K9JK/R was in one grid only, and much lighter than usual. My hat's off to W9FZ/R who worked me in four grids, three of them on 7 bands and one on 6 where we only missed 2304 because his rig would not tx, probably due to the cold. KC0IYT/R was also gracious enough to take a lot of time and wait until conditions built up enough to work me on all 8 bands. I had only two 8 band sweeps, and K8MD was the other one at 328 miles!
Its really hard to work with 10W on 902 and above at the distances we have to out here in flyover country and Im amazed at how some of these guys can hear me! Now that power is a lot easier to obtain on the microwaves, that limit needs to be increased to 100W for low power like 222 and 432. I wish a lot more stations would get serious about these bands around here and maybe they would if they thought they could be more successful. Problem is you also really have to put up big antennas way high off the ground to be consistently successful in this flat country when conditions dont cooperate.
There was a spike in activity in the morning on Sunday that greatly helped. A lot of NAQP stations came in on Sunday too. These contests should not be scheduled for the same weekend! There were some really neat highlights, and some good 6M scatter too. It was a slow and steady climb all day with unspectacular but steady rates. It was nice to run into K4TO in EM77 and work 6 bands at 400 miles. Worked a couple of stations in FM grids on CW when they suddenly popped up weak on 6M around 2330Z. K4QI in FM06 was S2 and steady on 50.160 and it seemed like he was working all up the east coast. I noticed 2M seemed depressed all day, but it got better in the evening when the activity picked up noticeably and my formerly depressing score got a lot better. Sure got busy around halftime! The noise to the west got lower but never went away. Propagation extended briefly during the evening down to the EM grids again. But this time we were able fill in some more bands than 2M, notably 4 bands with N4QWZ in EM66 and KG5MD in EM36 both at around 400 miles.
Both days there seemed to be a lot of what some other stations have described as mini openings, long shots out to 400 even 500 miles that only stayed open for a short time. Fading was deep and slow on the high bands and if you had the patience to wait for it to come up again you could work. This was true of 432 which seemed to be about the best band otherwise. No patience, no QSO. I saw this a lot in EM64 where I used to live, the fading is slower and deeper the higher you go in frequency, but the guys here in the Midwest apparently arent used to it. Lost a few otherwise doable QSOs because other stations didnt understand it, and wouldnt wait for it to come back up. Not sure why they were in such a hurry, there really wasnt all that much going on anyway.
Picked up some nice mults at the end when a few skeds with stations to work the bands we missed before due to poor conditions finally panned out. Not all of them do, but its sometimes well worth it to make a sked to try again later since the odds of running into another station 250 miles or more away again are not all that good most of the time. The end of the contest always seems crazy and this one was too. In the last 10 minutes I finally completed with N8KOL in EN80 at 400 miles on 222, 1296 and 6M for three new mults. Worked a local (only 120 miles) SMCer N9TF on 3 bands all in the last minute before the bell. A tad short of previous high scores, but not a bad effort all told.
73 de Bob2 -- K2DRH EN41VR IL
We had three bad ice storms in Dec, but my antennas came through all OK except that I had to climb and pop out a dozen or so crushed loops on the 902-3456 loopers from falling ice from the antennas above. Luckily it was 40+ degrees one day after Christmas. I lost a power supply right before the contest to stupidity (shorted an external transistor when I dropped something behind it), but I had plenty of capacity to spare. Im still unhappy with the 222 performance, although I still have no idea why yet.
On Saturday the conditions were dismal at best. Most of the afternoon I was barely able to work out more than 200 miles. 2M seemed especially depressed, but so were the bands above 432. The evening got better when I hooked up with KC VHF Grid Bandits KB9VSL and WB0NQD in EM29 and worked up to 1296. Ive been trying with these guys for months on 1296 and we finally broke the barrier. Had a few good 400-500 mile shots to EM56, 66, even down to EM54 and 55 around sunset, but they were short lived and didnt extend above 2M. Not many stations down that way were looking north to work unfortunately. It was a frustrating day and the antennas were moving slow. The extreme cold really slows them down and voltage drops when current goes way up. Moving them was taking about 50% longer and whatever direction I was facing at the time it was inevitable someone would call me off the back, then have trouble hearing me! I was really depressed when I looked at the score at the end of the night, it was way lower than normal.
WSJT was awesome! Lots of stations made skeds and we completed most of them, a few by slightly running over into the next sked. Why some stations feel a need to repeat the previous sequence instead of going on the next one like they are supposed to I have no idea! One local multi had their clock time off by a good 10 seconds making randoms a lot more difficult than they had to be. And two multis just couldnt seem to hear me on 2M despite good strong signals from them almost every sequence. K1TEO and I still do 15 sec sequences with Ver 4 of the program, but I decode in version 6. He hears me EVERY sequence despite low power and we worked 6M in two minutes flat, about 3 minutes with QSY instructions! We did both bands in 6 minutes! And its almost always like that with us, under 10 minutes. Wish they all were like that! We think Joe needs to bring back 15 sec sequences in the new version, if only just for us! Ive tried this with a few other stations before too with great success, but nobody else wants to run both versions now. 30 seconds wastes rox and time. K1JT heard me every sequence with 30 sec sequences and we took 11 minutes to work both bands. Randoms were plentiful and I got to sleep way too late.
Sunday stared out similar to Saturday with really depressed conditions but got better as the day warmed up from minus 10 to almost plus 10! The higher bands got better too and I found that despite the lack of mast mounted preamp I could actually hear on 2340 despite 90of 1-5/8 and another 50 of 1/2 inch superflex. Must be the deep freeze keeping the noise temperature down (I know, it really doesnt work that way)!
There werent many opportunities to work 2304 and 3456 since there is exactly two stations within a 150 miles of me with the capability (one has only 3456 and the other was not on in this contest). 903 and 1296 are almost as bad. I wont work several adjacent grids (or often even my own) on any of these bands unless the rovers go there. I only heard one rover within 150 miles with 2.3 and 3.4, and one other with 2304. Most of the stations available for me to work are out 200 miles or more, even the rovers. So when I try way too hard to work you on these two bands, now you know why!
Matter of fact I logged exactly 3 rovers the whole contest. Too darn cold to rove! K9JK/R was in one grid only, and much lighter than usual. My hat's off to W9FZ/R who worked me in four grids, three of them on 7 bands and one on 6 where we only missed 2304 because his rig would not tx, probably due to the cold. KC0IYT/R was also gracious enough to take a lot of time and wait until conditions built up enough to work me on all 8 bands. I had only two 8 band sweeps, and K8MD was the other one at 328 miles!
Its really hard to work with 10W on 902 and above at the distances we have to out here in flyover country and Im amazed at how some of these guys can hear me! Now that power is a lot easier to obtain on the microwaves, that limit needs to be increased to 100W for low power like 222 and 432. I wish a lot more stations would get serious about these bands around here and maybe they would if they thought they could be more successful. Problem is you also really have to put up big antennas way high off the ground to be consistently successful in this flat country when conditions dont cooperate.
There was a spike in activity in the morning on Sunday that greatly helped. A lot of NAQP stations came in on Sunday too. These contests should not be scheduled for the same weekend! There were some really neat highlights, and some good 6M scatter too. It was a slow and steady climb all day with unspectacular but steady rates. It was nice to run into K4TO in EM77 and work 6 bands at 400 miles. Worked a couple of stations in FM grids on CW when they suddenly popped up weak on 6M around 2330Z. K4QI in FM06 was S2 and steady on 50.160 and it seemed like he was working all up the east coast. I noticed 2M seemed depressed all day, but it got better in the evening when the activity picked up noticeably and my formerly depressing score got a lot better. Sure got busy around halftime! The noise to the west got lower but never went away. Propagation extended briefly during the evening down to the EM grids again. But this time we were able fill in some more bands than 2M, notably 4 bands with N4QWZ in EM66 and KG5MD in EM36 both at around 400 miles.
Both days there seemed to be a lot of what some other stations have described as mini openings, long shots out to 400 even 500 miles that only stayed open for a short time. Fading was deep and slow on the high bands and if you had the patience to wait for it to come up again you could work. This was true of 432 which seemed to be about the best band otherwise. No patience, no QSO. I saw this a lot in EM64 where I used to live, the fading is slower and deeper the higher you go in frequency, but the guys here in the Midwest apparently arent used to it. Lost a few otherwise doable QSOs because other stations didnt understand it, and wouldnt wait for it to come back up. Not sure why they were in such a hurry, there really wasnt all that much going on anyway.
Picked up some nice mults at the end when a few skeds with stations to work the bands we missed before due to poor conditions finally panned out. Not all of them do, but its sometimes well worth it to make a sked to try again later since the odds of running into another station 250 miles or more away again are not all that good most of the time. The end of the contest always seems crazy and this one was too. In the last 10 minutes I finally completed with N8KOL in EN80 at 400 miles on 222, 1296 and 6M for three new mults. Worked a local (only 120 miles) SMCer N9TF on 3 bands all in the last minute before the bell. A tad short of previous high scores, but not a bad effort all told.
73 de Bob2 -- K2DRH EN41VR IL
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