2008 ARRL June VHF Contest
06/17/2008 |
K2DRH
ARRL June VHF QSO Party
What a bumpy ride that was! Id finally got the 2M and the 3456 mast mount preamps repaired and reinstalled the Sunday before the contest after FEDEX lost the first 3456 preamp and DEMI had to make and ship me another overnight. Those guys really come through when you really need them! It was so windy that the 10lb preamp relay box was blowing out about 45 degrees from the tower all the way up the rope, but it was the only brief break in all the rain and high wind wed been having for weeks in Illinois. Of course the next day was calm and sunny despite the forecast. It was pretty much the last we would see of the sun until the following Monday after the contest. As you have heard on the
News the rivers are all flooded out here, and we live a mile from the
Mississippi. Luckily on a hill.
Everything checked out fine that week and we had some really nice tropo prop down to TX when I worked W5LUA at 700 miles all the way up to 3456. The rain was supposed to quit on Saturday and Sunday, just in time for the contest. On Thursday night a rotating thunderstorm with a potential tornado passed right over the house. A big lightning strike took out the power and my WSJT computer. So Friday I reconfigured another computer. Saturday was nice but very windy again. The insulators on the electric poles are glass ones from way back, and they suffered greatly this past winter with three major ice storms. Id tracked down the noise sources in March, and the Power Co was supposed to fix them all the week before the contest per the schedule theyd told me. They lied. Of course it could have had something to do with the thousands who lost power that week due to the thunderstorms that have hammered us over and over again this spring. Obviously the Power Co has skewed priorities!
So my noise level was S9 plus in the wind and I could barely hear on 6M or 2M to the east, my most populous direction. The first two hours of the contest were painful. Id gotten up to get a bite to eat because I couldnt hear much anyway and was still in the kitchen when the rain came again. When I got back to rig I was at first relieved that the usual 20 over rain static we get here all the time wasn't there, but then to my horror realized that the rain static had blown my 2M preamp again! So I went to take the cavity bandpass filter out of the line so I could hear better, but that somehow blew the 2M transverter too! I missed the AU opening on 2M reconfiguring with a transverter that had no front end gain since it was supposed to be an IF transverter for microwave transverters. I had
to use the less than optimum preamp in my brick. Not ideal, but serviceable.
As I finished 6 began to open to TX and stayed open for several hours. I was really running way behind so I stayed on six and worked several great hours to the southwest and west in between rain static and thunderstorms that had me pull the coax for long periods several times, but got nothing to the east or FL despite the insulators being quiet again. I had little 2M or above in the log by the time I went to my WSJT skeds, but I couldnt hear nearly as well on 2 as I normally do anyway.
WSJT was fine on 6M, but challenging on 2M. Skeds took longer than normal. I totally missed the tropo opening down to TX and OK Sat night since I was tied up on WSJT for longer than usual. Luckily the tropo was still there on Sunday morning and I worked several stations down in AL and MS, some as high as 1296! As it faded 6m came back up again, unfortunately to TX again that Id all but saturated the night before, but also to FL and and the SE so I had some really great 100 plus QSO hours. The band moved around to CO and out further west but FL and TX stayed in until I saturated them. I kept praying for a solid NE opening to really jack up the numbers but while it teased me several times in 5 and 10 minute bursts, nothing really came of it. Several times it opened long to VE1/2 but there werent many to work there either. I did work Cuba and Puerto Rico but no other DX, despite hearing someone say Im trying to get North Americas attention as two stations insisted on calling over and over despite my asking them to please stand by for the DX. Oh and did I mention the thunderstorms that had me off the air two more times again.
I went to 2M but hardly anyone was there. I did hear the Iowa stations out about 200 miles west of me calling 7 land stations on 2M Es that I couldnt hear. That really frustrated me! I started to get bad audio reports on 6, but screaming "turn down your mic gain" at me or some snotty 7 who claimed to have written the book on compression 50 years ago proclaiming I was the poster child for bad RF breath werent at all helpful since I knew I was running very little of either. N0URW, who knows that I abuse neither audio gain nor compression, finally told me about the really bad hum and ringing feedback that had suddenly developed on my 6M tx. I was able to fix it by swapping out 6M transveters but wasted more precious time reconfiguring things yet again. My apologies to anyone who had to listen to that, it must have been awful. But folks who just automatically assume Im doing it on purpose really frost me. Not much of an expert who cant tell compression from feedback either.
The noise to the east started up once more just in time for a good half hour opening on 6M to the NE. I was barely able to hear anyone. But Qs were going in the log despite the noise, the deaf 2M station and the highly stressed out operator. 70 cm was quite excellent.
This contest ended with a whimper as 6 died completely for the last two hours, but I did score some good mults on 2M and up. But I worked no rovers all contest with 903 or anything above 1296, and darn few with that. It could have been much better had several things been a little more cooperative but the score wasnt too bad, all things considered.
73 de Bob -- K2DRH EN41vr
What a bumpy ride that was! Id finally got the 2M and the 3456 mast mount preamps repaired and reinstalled the Sunday before the contest after FEDEX lost the first 3456 preamp and DEMI had to make and ship me another overnight. Those guys really come through when you really need them! It was so windy that the 10lb preamp relay box was blowing out about 45 degrees from the tower all the way up the rope, but it was the only brief break in all the rain and high wind wed been having for weeks in Illinois. Of course the next day was calm and sunny despite the forecast. It was pretty much the last we would see of the sun until the following Monday after the contest. As you have heard on the
News the rivers are all flooded out here, and we live a mile from the
Mississippi. Luckily on a hill.
Everything checked out fine that week and we had some really nice tropo prop down to TX when I worked W5LUA at 700 miles all the way up to 3456. The rain was supposed to quit on Saturday and Sunday, just in time for the contest. On Thursday night a rotating thunderstorm with a potential tornado passed right over the house. A big lightning strike took out the power and my WSJT computer. So Friday I reconfigured another computer. Saturday was nice but very windy again. The insulators on the electric poles are glass ones from way back, and they suffered greatly this past winter with three major ice storms. Id tracked down the noise sources in March, and the Power Co was supposed to fix them all the week before the contest per the schedule theyd told me. They lied. Of course it could have had something to do with the thousands who lost power that week due to the thunderstorms that have hammered us over and over again this spring. Obviously the Power Co has skewed priorities!
So my noise level was S9 plus in the wind and I could barely hear on 6M or 2M to the east, my most populous direction. The first two hours of the contest were painful. Id gotten up to get a bite to eat because I couldnt hear much anyway and was still in the kitchen when the rain came again. When I got back to rig I was at first relieved that the usual 20 over rain static we get here all the time wasn't there, but then to my horror realized that the rain static had blown my 2M preamp again! So I went to take the cavity bandpass filter out of the line so I could hear better, but that somehow blew the 2M transverter too! I missed the AU opening on 2M reconfiguring with a transverter that had no front end gain since it was supposed to be an IF transverter for microwave transverters. I had
to use the less than optimum preamp in my brick. Not ideal, but serviceable.
As I finished 6 began to open to TX and stayed open for several hours. I was really running way behind so I stayed on six and worked several great hours to the southwest and west in between rain static and thunderstorms that had me pull the coax for long periods several times, but got nothing to the east or FL despite the insulators being quiet again. I had little 2M or above in the log by the time I went to my WSJT skeds, but I couldnt hear nearly as well on 2 as I normally do anyway.
WSJT was fine on 6M, but challenging on 2M. Skeds took longer than normal. I totally missed the tropo opening down to TX and OK Sat night since I was tied up on WSJT for longer than usual. Luckily the tropo was still there on Sunday morning and I worked several stations down in AL and MS, some as high as 1296! As it faded 6m came back up again, unfortunately to TX again that Id all but saturated the night before, but also to FL and and the SE so I had some really great 100 plus QSO hours. The band moved around to CO and out further west but FL and TX stayed in until I saturated them. I kept praying for a solid NE opening to really jack up the numbers but while it teased me several times in 5 and 10 minute bursts, nothing really came of it. Several times it opened long to VE1/2 but there werent many to work there either. I did work Cuba and Puerto Rico but no other DX, despite hearing someone say Im trying to get North Americas attention as two stations insisted on calling over and over despite my asking them to please stand by for the DX. Oh and did I mention the thunderstorms that had me off the air two more times again.
I went to 2M but hardly anyone was there. I did hear the Iowa stations out about 200 miles west of me calling 7 land stations on 2M Es that I couldnt hear. That really frustrated me! I started to get bad audio reports on 6, but screaming "turn down your mic gain" at me or some snotty 7 who claimed to have written the book on compression 50 years ago proclaiming I was the poster child for bad RF breath werent at all helpful since I knew I was running very little of either. N0URW, who knows that I abuse neither audio gain nor compression, finally told me about the really bad hum and ringing feedback that had suddenly developed on my 6M tx. I was able to fix it by swapping out 6M transveters but wasted more precious time reconfiguring things yet again. My apologies to anyone who had to listen to that, it must have been awful. But folks who just automatically assume Im doing it on purpose really frost me. Not much of an expert who cant tell compression from feedback either.
The noise to the east started up once more just in time for a good half hour opening on 6M to the NE. I was barely able to hear anyone. But Qs were going in the log despite the noise, the deaf 2M station and the highly stressed out operator. 70 cm was quite excellent.
This contest ended with a whimper as 6 died completely for the last two hours, but I did score some good mults on 2M and up. But I worked no rovers all contest with 903 or anything above 1296, and darn few with that. It could have been much better had several things been a little more cooperative but the score wasnt too bad, all things considered.
73 de Bob -- K2DRH EN41vr
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