02/01/2007 | K8EP With great anticipation, the Eastern Panhandle ARC gathered on North Mountain near Martinsburg, WV on September 8th in preparation for the September VHF QSO Party. Even though a couple of our regular participants were not going to be able to make it this year, we looked forward to enjoying the weekend. During set up, the always unwelcome visitor by the name of Murphy made the effects of his law very evident. First, we had some difficulty coupling the mast sections together and in setting up our temporary towers. Then, due to a last minute mix-up, we were not going to have a portable crank-up mast at our disposal as in previous years, requiring that we place the 222 and 432 antennas on the same tower and mast.

Even with those issues, we were poised and ready as Saturday arrived. However, our computer logging network that worked so well on setup day fell victim to Murphy resulting in some last minute consternation. As the contest started, we were deaf on 432 due to an intermittent relay on our PA and more drastically found ourselves faced with having to replace our 222 PA deck with one from our 222 MHz repeater when it failed suddenly only one hour into the contest.

We remained undaunted and began operating the contest on 50, 144, 222, and 432. Being short on hampower, we opted to bring in pre-made foods rather than sacrifice an operator to cook for the group. The addition of a Rig Blaster to call CQ using our contest software on two bands helped significantly in preventing operator fatigue especially during overnight operation.

Even though we had hoped for some sort of band opening, we found propagation to be very flat until Saturday evening. Suddenly we began to hearing stations from the Texas coast on six meters. The band opening lasted for all of ten minutes and then left just as quickly as it came. Each operator spent considerable time behind the microphone but everyone was having too much fun to find the extra operating tiring. As the contest ended Sunday night, everyone commented on how much each one of us had enjoyed the event and decided that it was indeed a success. -- W8CMK