2007 ARRL June VHF Contest
06/13/2007 |
K2DRH
It didnt look good to mount a serious effort this June, but with a lot of luck and little help from a friend it all came together the week before the contest. An atypical late spring refueling outage at the nuke plant and resolution of an unexpected medical issue that demanded immediate attention left me temporarily unable to climb and service my antennas or fix my broken rotor from the January contest. The WX was too iffy to install the new rotor system K0XG built for me and brought over the Sunday before the contest but he kindly brought down the old motor, cleaned and repaired it, then reinstalled it. It moves reliably again (at least until the gearbox leaks more oil into it).
Mercifully the winter winds were kind to the antennas and they all seemed to work well, however the preamp on 2304 was strangely quiet. Still not sure exactly whats going on, but I could hear exactly the same with or without it switched in! Not exactly the ideal situation, but the line loss is low enough that I could still make a few QSOs! Some needed repairs to the switches and electronics and the station was back on the air again, hardly a day before the contest.
While it was naive to expect the propagation gods would smile as sweetly as they did last year, there was no preparing for how dismal conditions were Saturday afternoon. It reminded me of January! The sudden heat wave in the Midwest really threw a wet blanket on things and made it very noisy to boot. Local signals were depressed and while there were a few extended range stations to the S and SE that could be heard on 2M, it was hard to get their attention. Even when I did, it was not always very productive running the bands. Except for local stations, 6M was dead as a rock all day and nothing of any note showed up to be worked in EN41. The microwave bands were dismal and stations that are normally quite workable were just not there.
After the sun went down (almost 9PM here) the noise finally lifted and propagation got much better, but strong mountaintop ducting led a few Eastern multis to dominate the call and adjacent frequencies, making it difficult to attract the attention of stations that hang there and dont listen much off the call. The enhanced conditions the mountaintop stations were enjoying wasnt helping other stations either, at least not until much later. Unless conditions are phenomenal, casual Midwest contest activity pretty much dies by the time the 10PM news comes on.
So by the time conditions got better, the activity was down and it was already time to do WSJT skeds. This was more frustrating than usual and my 1st 2M sked with W2SZ suffered from a total lack of rocks for about 20 minutes before we finally got it going. Then I had a frustrating 6M session with KM5PO whom I heard several times every sequence but who could not seem to hear me at all, again until 20 minutes into the sked! We finally caught fire, then worked 2M too, barely within the allotted half hour for both bands. One multi was a no show (I later learned due to technical issues) and I finally gave up after ANOTHER 20 minutes. This all represented a lot of time wasted while the bands were getting better and better and the causal ops were going to bed.
N3EMF (at K3EAR) went quickly on 6M and their WSJT signals on 2M were almost solid tropo! My final sked with K1TEO went like clockwork in less than 10 minutes for both bands. We still do 15 second sequences in Ver 4 so we can really get it done quickly! In between WSJT skeds I worked several extended range stations, some on 4 bands. I stayed up way too late trying to take advantage of the extended conditions, but found few stations to work beyond the mountaintop multis all clustered around the call. While I was listening for random WSJT QSOs (not many to be had) I noted several stations were being very sloppy with their time settings, some as much as 10 seconds off!
Sunday morning was much the same. K8GP dominated 144.200 all night and was still there, hammering away when I got up again at 1100Z after only 2 hours sleep. As far as I could tell they sat there the whole time. Even hours later when conditions were down again I still heard them in the background. Not a lot of Midwest stations get on before about 7AM (1200Z), but I was surprised at the lack of stations to work to the east when I finally found a clear frequency up around 144.225 to call. I guess they were all working east too! Microwave conditions were still down. K0AWU in EN37 and I were successful on JT65b on 6M through 432.
A bit after 1200Z 6M opened and for a while it seemed like FN42 was the only grid I could work. Although it gradually broadened out there were not a lot of different grids. This spike lasted less than an hour before it got spotty again. When it was over, the nights enhancement was all but gone, only to be replaced by dull conditions similar to Saturday. At least there was some intermittent Es to a few new grids, although it sounded like it was lot better maybe 50-150 miles east of me. I got another nice hour long Es burst towards FN42 again around 1700Z, then the band slipped into the afternoon doldrums.
When the sun went down tropo conditions improved again, but 6M kept trying to open to the west, south and into FL. It never really opened solid and the rates were low, but it added quite a few mults to my totals. I worked KC4PX with the weakest signals Ive ever heard from him on 6M! I was hard pressed whether to stay on 6 in the hope of a better opening or go to 2M and work the tropo. I tried to do as much of both as I could while still wrapping up the last rover grids and keeping microwave skeds from when wed failed to work earlier in the contest. For the last couple of hours my band changes look pretty schizophrenic! Near the end I lucked into K4EJQ in EM86 on 6 through 903, but 1296 was a real heartbreaker with only partials copied. -- 73 DE K2DRH
Mercifully the winter winds were kind to the antennas and they all seemed to work well, however the preamp on 2304 was strangely quiet. Still not sure exactly whats going on, but I could hear exactly the same with or without it switched in! Not exactly the ideal situation, but the line loss is low enough that I could still make a few QSOs! Some needed repairs to the switches and electronics and the station was back on the air again, hardly a day before the contest.
While it was naive to expect the propagation gods would smile as sweetly as they did last year, there was no preparing for how dismal conditions were Saturday afternoon. It reminded me of January! The sudden heat wave in the Midwest really threw a wet blanket on things and made it very noisy to boot. Local signals were depressed and while there were a few extended range stations to the S and SE that could be heard on 2M, it was hard to get their attention. Even when I did, it was not always very productive running the bands. Except for local stations, 6M was dead as a rock all day and nothing of any note showed up to be worked in EN41. The microwave bands were dismal and stations that are normally quite workable were just not there.
After the sun went down (almost 9PM here) the noise finally lifted and propagation got much better, but strong mountaintop ducting led a few Eastern multis to dominate the call and adjacent frequencies, making it difficult to attract the attention of stations that hang there and dont listen much off the call. The enhanced conditions the mountaintop stations were enjoying wasnt helping other stations either, at least not until much later. Unless conditions are phenomenal, casual Midwest contest activity pretty much dies by the time the 10PM news comes on.
So by the time conditions got better, the activity was down and it was already time to do WSJT skeds. This was more frustrating than usual and my 1st 2M sked with W2SZ suffered from a total lack of rocks for about 20 minutes before we finally got it going. Then I had a frustrating 6M session with KM5PO whom I heard several times every sequence but who could not seem to hear me at all, again until 20 minutes into the sked! We finally caught fire, then worked 2M too, barely within the allotted half hour for both bands. One multi was a no show (I later learned due to technical issues) and I finally gave up after ANOTHER 20 minutes. This all represented a lot of time wasted while the bands were getting better and better and the causal ops were going to bed.
N3EMF (at K3EAR) went quickly on 6M and their WSJT signals on 2M were almost solid tropo! My final sked with K1TEO went like clockwork in less than 10 minutes for both bands. We still do 15 second sequences in Ver 4 so we can really get it done quickly! In between WSJT skeds I worked several extended range stations, some on 4 bands. I stayed up way too late trying to take advantage of the extended conditions, but found few stations to work beyond the mountaintop multis all clustered around the call. While I was listening for random WSJT QSOs (not many to be had) I noted several stations were being very sloppy with their time settings, some as much as 10 seconds off!
Sunday morning was much the same. K8GP dominated 144.200 all night and was still there, hammering away when I got up again at 1100Z after only 2 hours sleep. As far as I could tell they sat there the whole time. Even hours later when conditions were down again I still heard them in the background. Not a lot of Midwest stations get on before about 7AM (1200Z), but I was surprised at the lack of stations to work to the east when I finally found a clear frequency up around 144.225 to call. I guess they were all working east too! Microwave conditions were still down. K0AWU in EN37 and I were successful on JT65b on 6M through 432.
A bit after 1200Z 6M opened and for a while it seemed like FN42 was the only grid I could work. Although it gradually broadened out there were not a lot of different grids. This spike lasted less than an hour before it got spotty again. When it was over, the nights enhancement was all but gone, only to be replaced by dull conditions similar to Saturday. At least there was some intermittent Es to a few new grids, although it sounded like it was lot better maybe 50-150 miles east of me. I got another nice hour long Es burst towards FN42 again around 1700Z, then the band slipped into the afternoon doldrums.
When the sun went down tropo conditions improved again, but 6M kept trying to open to the west, south and into FL. It never really opened solid and the rates were low, but it added quite a few mults to my totals. I worked KC4PX with the weakest signals Ive ever heard from him on 6M! I was hard pressed whether to stay on 6 in the hope of a better opening or go to 2M and work the tropo. I tried to do as much of both as I could while still wrapping up the last rover grids and keeping microwave skeds from when wed failed to work earlier in the contest. For the last couple of hours my band changes look pretty schizophrenic! Near the end I lucked into K4EJQ in EM86 on 6 through 903, but 1296 was a real heartbreaker with only partials copied. -- 73 DE K2DRH
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