The story of this VHF contest begins with an ice storm with 60-80 MPH winds right after Christmas that destroyed several Midwest antenna farms.  While my QTH was mostly spared, the local electric distribution system was not.  After 2 years of work and rework ComEd had finally cleared up most of my power line noise sources last October, of course AFTER the September VHF contest. The storm not only re-damaged some of them, it created new ones to the west and north that are really nasty with walls of S9 noise the noise blanker can’t remove. Of course it takes a long time for the utility to get around to such “low priority” work and it doesn’t even get in the schedule (at least 6 weeks out) until the lines are surveyed and troubleshot by a power quality tech who often takes weeks to even get to it. Then it usually gets bumped a few times for higher priority work so things drag on for several more months even when you
raise hell about it. So I’m dreading this next round of delay after delay. The electric distribution system out in the country is getting old and maintenance budgets are tight after deregulation spawned massive price undercutting so there is no budget for improvement, just expedient repairs. Basically the politicians left the utility holding the bag for infrastructure costs while allowing third party power marketers with no such burden to cut into their bottom line. Consequently that quiet QTH out in the country is fast becoming a myth. 

The ice storm was kinder to my antennas then some, but the ice load and high winds did take one director off my 2x11 6M stack and skewed the 222 antennas out of alignment with the rest by almost 10 degrees. Luckily going into the contest everything seemed like it was working at least as well as it had in Sept. 902/3 is still not right but there was no time to replace the power
divider coax that I suspect has gone bad at the antennas. The day of the contest the 902/3 mast mount preamp decided to quit. No big loss since it didn’t seem to help much anyway. The first QSY to 222 was a bust and the transverter was not keying up despite working fine an hour before. Quick troubleshooting revealed no power to the sequencer that was easily resolved,
but it still took time off right at the start when there are lot of stations around to work.

 
Conditions on Saturday were dismal despite the mild weather for January. Stations past 250 miles on 2M were all but non-existent and the QSO rate was as slow as I’ve ever seen it even for January.  It really stayed that way all day with the only bright spot being chasing the rovers, made easier by cellphone. Unfortunately there were fewer rovers out than normal and the ones to the north had to transmit CW so I could hear them through the intense PL noise. The evening was interesting with many Ms QSOs being set up on line, but I’m still glad I made some primary WSJT skeds before the contest. Unfortunately my last sked of the night with K1TEO was a bust when my 6M final gave up the ghost. Took me over an hour to recover with another old and much lower power brick (about 50-60 W) by which time my internet provider went down (for about 3 hours) forcing me to give up and go to bed.  Luckily it was back up again in the morning and I was able to catch Jeff on PJ to complete our usual Ms contacts on 6 and 2M. Not being sure how well the venerable 6M brick could take it, I stopped doing the high duty cycle modes and concentrated on good old fashioned contesting.

Luckily the bands were in a lot better shape on Sunday; not really good but much more like flat instead of depressed. 6M scatter seemed really good to the East but hardly anyone could hear me 6 db down from normal when I called. I set up a few skeds with some of the stations on ON4KST and was particularly impressed when K1SIX could still hear my puny 6M output on CW. I was pretty happy that my really low power seemed to be working whenever I QSYed a station to 6M even if we did have to go to CW a lot more often. But calling CQ was not productive like it usually is. Guess the combo of 200W and high gain antennas really has me spoiled!

2M and up got a lot better as the day went on, but things still fell off a cliff most times on 902 and above. I only made one 2304 QSO with W9SZ who had a really tough time in the mud and wind in his hilltopper spot, and I was his only 2304 contact! There is just nobody to work on 2304 less than 250 miles away anymore! In the evening there were pretty 2M good conditions to the West out 400 miles and more, and I put N0LL in EM09 in the log, but had to do it CW and still had difficulty due to the PL noise in that direction.  All in all pretty pleased with the outcome since I managed to finish a lot stronger than negative conditions on Saturday, the awful PL noise and limping on 6M would suggest. 

73 de Bob2