08/18/2004 | N August UHF contest 2004.... NRW EN41go.....()
This year I operated in the low power section on 222 & 432 Mhz at my home qth..... My 1296 setup turned out to be dead on both transmit & recieve come contest time even though prior testing a few days earlier showed everything worked fine... Grrrrr...
Once again without any band openings from the gods this contest still proved to be exciting,,,challenging & very fun...
The exciting part was all the rovers...Wow!.. You guys & gals really kept the rotor humming & humming & humming... It was awesome to say the least....Big thanks to the NLRS,,, Rovermania!!!!
The challenging part was as always...Pulling weak signals out of nothingness....And finding the rovers.....
And the fun part,,, well lets just say,,, the exciting & challenging aspects make it fun....
Farthest contact on 222 Mhz. to another base station was once again,,, KWU en37....( approx 400 miles) And the farthest contact to a rover goes to NJZ/R clear out in en03 & again in en14 on both 222 & 432....Thats almost 400 miles to a rover... Awesome !!!! (ؿ
My score at the end doesn't begin to show the level of activity because I operated using voice mode only....Yea I know cw is one of the main ingredients for any contest & is especially needed for the higher bands.... So I missed a lot of qso's......My new goal was that this is the last time I plan on running low power in any of the ARRL vhf/uhf contest...( I know the rovers will be glad to hear this ) I hear an enormous amount of stations that respond to my calls with,,,sorry I can't pull you out of the noise... ( thats not going to be the problem anymore) I know by moving up to hi-power more will hear my signal which in turn might bring in more activity to my area....
So be sure to look & listen this way come the ARRL September VHF QSO Party for a much larger signal from EN41go.... I'll have 2,6,222,432 & 1296......
Thanks All for taking the time to read my soapbox... & 73's (ؿ Dan... -- N