09/14/2006 | W8MOP dah-di-dit dit: di-dah-dah dah-dah-dah-di-dit dah-dah dah-dah-dah di-dah-dah-dit
East River Amateur Radio Club, Bluefield, West Virginia, W8MOP. ARRL September VHF contest, Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 9-10, 2006

On Saturday, Gary Kadar N8GK, Dave Cox N4DBC and Jerry Connelly KC8TES setup for the VHF contest on East River Mountain in Bluefield, WV, Grid EM-97. They ran the contest from about 3-7pm on Saturday and from around 830am to 530pm on Sunday. Dave setup at the very top of the hill using a guy wire fence for his antenna support and sunshield. Gary and Jerry setup a bit below the hill and used Garys hitch-mounted antenna structure, complete with rotor. They used 11-element beams for 440 and 2M and Jerrys homemade 3-element beam for 6M. Gary worked 6M with the Clubs Yaesu FT-100 while Jerry worked 440 Mhz with an ICOM 706. Dave worked 2M with his own Yaesu FT-857D. There were 52 contacts on 6M, 28 contacts on 2M and 9 contacts on 440 Mhz made over the two-day period. Claimed score 4018. The furthest contact was either K3YTL Murgas ARC, Wilkes Barre, PA in FN11 or KB8U Russel Dwarshuis, Ann Arbor, MI in EN71 or WA3QPX Paul Domanski, Townsend, DE in FM 29, depending on where their operating location was. (I guesstimate 404, 370 and 343 miles respectively.) Roger Stefancic KC8LGR and Lonnie Underwood KI4EED showed up during the contest and helped make several contacts each. Kathy Underwood KG4CTK, JD Lawson KD8DQE and Anthony Cook (no call yet) were able to show up for the contest also.
Gary and Dave reported that Sunday was much better than Saturday for the quality and number of contacts made and that the weather was just perfect sans too much sun. Gary reported that, A good time was had by all. Of note: The contest site was in Bland County, Virginia, a relatively 'rare' county for contacting via Amateur Radio. -- W4OF