01/20/2003 | W4SHG Well this is my first VHF Sweepstakes Contest and certainly one that will stick in my mind for some time to come. I have spent considerable time building my station over the past several months to better compete in VHF/UHF Contests. My last outing in September was incredibly pitiful and my score well lets just say it was a learning experience.

It started Saturday at 2:00pm EDST here in the East and my station was ready. I had been up on the tower the weekend prior correcting a bad cable to the 23cm M2 antenna and adding some desperately needed preamplifiers for 23cm, 70cm and 2 meters. It seems that the ole Yaesu 736 was designed with preamplifiers of some sort somewhat mandatory if you want to hear anyone. This was quite clear in the September outing. So Jerry up at SSB was kind enough to take my money and the additions were completed last weekend.

With preamplifiers in place, and all coax cables checked and in good working order I prepared for the contest intending to go to bed at contest close with a good conscience and working as hard as possible to get the best score possible. All the amplifiers were checked and set to work at or below the power levels defined in the Low Power rules and off we went.

Saturday started off with all equipment working, amazing however the bands seemed somewhat dead, by the end of that night working till about 12:00 midnight I had a whopping score of around 4800 points. Again we fall into the pitiful category however this was an improvement over the September Contest so I took a little 4 hour nap to prepare for Sunday. I got up early, around 5:30am in hopes we would get an opening on 2m at sunrise. It's was extremely cold here and nothing materialized. Now I might have been discouraged but considering I am at 62 feet above sea level here in Stafford, Virginia (FM18GK) I might just get accustomed to scores in the pitiful range as working from this location is not ideal.

On Sunday things were just a bit different I started working stations pretty hard and with the help of some extremely competent and technically proficient operators, AA2UK-Bill, K4RTS Richard and the Multi guys K3DNE and N3HBX we started racking up some serious points. Guys thanks for putting up with a Technician Class Operator trying to work 1296. I worked absolutely everyone I could hear and settled in on really focusing on the North East. What a thrill to work K1FO on 432 up in FN31, 300+ miles and that call will put a smile on your face. As usual the big guns, K4QI and W4RX pinned the needle on both the 847 and 736. Thought I had Russ down in FM06 on 1296 as of course he was loud but my 10 watts just didnt quite get back to him. I couldnt get to W4RX either so it appears my 1296 still needs some work. I guess its time to get some LMR-1700. Kudos to Bill AA2UK for spending a considerable amount of time and effort finally working us from NJ on all the bands including 1296.

Then it happened, the conditions changed and the Mid-West came rolling in on 6 meters. For about 90 minutes we were rolling off new grids on 6 meters working some mini pile ups and cranking the score up until around 6:45pm all of that disappeared.

We then went back to the weak signal work and pointed the array north. Again new operators and complete band runnings were pretty good as we worked most everyone we heard if they had the bands.

Toward the end I found I was missing some really close grids, FM07 and FM18. Yes it happens to me every time. I miss contacts in my own grid square. Then KG4HOT fired up down in FM07 and we ran the bands with 20 minutes to spare, Thanks Tim for the 220 contact and the new grid in 432 and 222.

I had a blast and increased my score considerably this contest. Next time I will be hunting the top Low Power Ops as we are going to the mountain. Thanks to all who worked with us or attempted too.

73 de -- W4SHG