09/25/2008 | K1WHS CONTEST REPORT FROM MAINE, FN43 The weather went downhill on Saturday along with any propagation, as the rains came early Saturday evening. It started as a heavy drizzle, and progressed into some heavy downpours overnight and Sunday morning. The past three years, 2005 thru 2007 have all been subpar or normal here in Northern New England, and 2008 continued that trend. We had all bands running from 50 thru 24 GHz, and a crew of 12 most of the time to keep all the chairs warm. This was a contest where you had to stay in the chair to get a reasonable score. Activity was low on the higher bands, and contacts became like pulling teeth. I think the bad weather kept the recreational rovers indoors. There were still some serious guys out there, with calls like WA2IID, N2LBT, KE3HT, KB1EKZ, N2SLN, and W1AUV. Thanks fellas for the Qs and some grids. We also had our own crew of rovers to hit the unpopulated Maine and Northeast grids. Without them all, our score would be much less.

We tried some WSJT contacts on 50 and 144 with good success. We even tried some random EME when the moon came up, and nabbed two stations on 144. W7GJ was worked via EME on 50 MHz when the moon set. He had a good signal and was quite audible in the headphones! TNX Lance! All in all, the digital effort was good.

We tried out the new 222 MHz antenna system for the first time, and the four long yagis seemed to be playing well. At some point Mr. Murphy showed up, and the 222 amp exploded with a large "CRACK". The HV fuse went, and a post mortem revealed that the tube in the amp has gone to the old beryllium copper burial grounds! We patched in an FM amp and managed to get 125 watts on SSB and CW to finish out the weekend. The low power did not seem to hurt us. We ended up with 46 grids on 222. We had a failure on 432, with the KW amplifier blower dying. I had a spare! But then the driver amp became ill, and drive power dropped from 65 watts to 30 watts. This cut us back some, but we forged ahead at 3 dB down. I guess all this stuff is getting old and cranky. I feel like there is 5 to 10 lbs of bubble gum holding the place together!! I did try a new radio on 144 MHz. An Elecraft K3 got baptized by K9PW on that band. He said it worked great. He sure worked a pile of grids (66) on that band. There was no DX, just a bunch of stations worked through brute force. Lots of metal up high really makes the difference when conditions are poor.

We had a great group of operators to run all the bands. K1BX and K9PW held down the hot seats on 50 and 144. N2CEI ran 222, while WZ1V ran 432. The rest of us filled the other chairs. W2PED, N1DPM, K0DI, WA1T, W1MRQ, K0ZK and N4HY were all doing well. N4HY actually got so excited that his chair succumbed to the onslaught he was dealing. Thanks for the pile of kindling wood, Bob! N1LBI again, was the cook, and with the cold and wet weather, we really appreciated all the hot food Chef Monte served up. The dogs hung around the kitchen and were rewarded handsomely by all the ops around meal times. Sandra kept the network running. I think there were 11 laptops all connected. We had few problems with them. That was nice.

In past years I have been fighting with a cranky generator system. The old one, a 30 KW military diesel set, died in 2007. The new one, a brand new 20 KW diesel, promptly overheated this past June, and I have been struggling to get it fixed ever since then. (Re engineering it is a better term!) The re worked machine showed up in the nick of time on September 10th. We ran it about 60 hours and it never hiccupped once. If anything it is now running a bit too cool!

So we all had a good time. We did not do any better than last year,about 1 million points, but we can all agree that a weekend out in the woods playing with radios is a winner every time! -- K1WHS