09/19/2003 | K1WHS September is THE contest for us here in FN43 in the wilds of Maine. This year we were greeted with average conditions. There was no real phenomenal DX to report. Just alot of steady operating. The big news was that we had a great group of operators: some new to VHF and some old hands as well. Lauren,W0LD helped out along with WA1MBA and K1DG for a short time on Saturday afternoon. Everything went pretty smoothly if you discount the six laptops and network crashing just before the contest began!! From a disastrous start, we salvaged a great ending. All the gear worked great. Whatever blew up was fixed in short order. Grid and QSO totals were fantastic on all bands. Activity seemed great. The new 144 antenna made a big splash as did the new 432 array. The 144 system was a stack of eight short rear mount yagis stuck on the tower leg. Both were instrumental in improving our score for our best effort yet. We almost beat our 2001 September score where we had tropo on all bands down the entire Eastern Seaboard!
Some neat QSOs included a 2 minute contact with K9NS on 144 SSB! Also working AA2UK, K2TXB, and K2UYH all on 10 GHz from here in Maine. How about working W2FU in Western NY on all bands up thru 5.7 GHz? The six meter array cranked out 73 grids. I could go on and on. There must have been some planetary alignment going on!!
Operators included W1MRQ, W1SD, K1DY, K1DG, K1WHS, WA1T, WA1MBA, N2CEI & XYL Sandra, N2EOC, W2PED, W0LD, and K0ZK. N1LBI, "Chef Monte" was in rare form with a killer kitchen setup, and served up several great entrees. My favorite was the seafood chowder. The Breakfast stew was a winner as well. The two dogs, Demi and Beagle Bailey helped out by keeping the hill clean. No old hotdogs were left around with those two on the job. We had enough operators so that we could take some breaks and get some sleep. (I got three hours!) The wx was fine. The tents were comfortable. It does not get much better than this in my book. -- K1WHS