09/26/2008 | K0MHC PATIENCE was the theme of the Sept. VHF QSO Party this year! As Dennis NT0V asked: "Do you have wind, rain, fog or cool temps over there?" The answer was: "YES!". The BAD news was that the weather was challenging. The GOOD news was that the atmospheric noise was drowning out the power line noise (most of the time). The one redeeming characteristic of my old FT-847 is that it has a great noise blanker. The intermittent power line noise (from a nearby 50 KV transmission line) pretty much covers 6, 2 and 1.25 meters when it's on.

Overall I was encouraged by the rover participation with John WA0VPJ/R, Glen KC0IYT/R, Jon W0ZQ/R and Bill N0LNO/R (who showed up unannounced in my neck of the woods to give out 14 Qs from 5 grids). What a great surprise that was! Sorry that I missed Bruce K9FZ/R, Gene N0DQS/R and any others that were out there in the noise level. The problem up here in the sticks is that I usually don't work many of the nearby grids. Of the 9 "local" grids I usually have no contacts in 4-5 of them.
The growing number of multi-op stations is also an encouraging trend. My hats off to Terry W0VB for taking a stab at it. We need to encourage more multi-ops in the upper Midwest area.
The Northwest stations turned out in greater numbers this year. However we didn't hear from several of them that were contacted earlier. The Northwest calling frequency (144.220) was busy sometimes and too noisy to tell during other times.

SATISFACTIONS: included getting 222 working again (thanks to DEMI and TE Systems), making all but one of the 6 meter contacts, FINALLY making 1296 with Wally W0PHD and making the "impossible" bank shot with Bill K0AWU on 10 GHz.

DISAPOINTMENTS: included working only 3 Qs on 2304 and NONE on 3456! There seemed to be an invisible wall on these two bands whereas 10 and 5.7 GHz seemed to do much better under the same conditions and paths.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS: includes reduction of power line noise, alignment of rotors, repairing pre-amps, transverter frequency stabilization, transceiver replacement and antenna tweaking.

SCREWUPS:

- Trying to run the bands with Dennis NT0V off of the back of my beams.

- Only running 100 watts on 2 meters (forgot to change back to 200 watts for the contest after calibrating power meter with a 100 watt slug).

- SWR of 3:1 on 6 meters due to water in the coax (again). I shouldn't have been tempted to reuse a piece of 9913!

AWARDS:

- Most Patient Operator - Glen KC0IYT/R for the many Qs and taking the extra time to try working the looper bands from difficult locations and going back into EN33 when I missed him the first time. Thanks again Glen!

- Most Productive Ggigahead - Jon W0ZQ/R) who was persistent with 5.7 and 10 GHz QSOs

- Longest Distance Operator - Todd KC9BQA in EN63ao on 222 and 144 before the invisible wall went up

GOALS: Well 2 out of 3. I had hoped to improve on previous results by working 200 Qs (only made 184), 100 grids and 30K points for this contest. Thanks to Jon W0ZQ and several others for helping finalize the log (VHFLOG v3.56). I ended up deleting and then re-entering some of the Qs to clear up several duplicate false positives. Most have been a data entry problem.

REFLECTIONS: Overall this was a building year. Now with all of the bands running again I'll be able to concentrate on individual upgrades rather than a rebuild of the tower again. See you all in the Spring.

Thanks to all for the activity.

73, Jim -
Lake Miltona, MN -
EN26ha -
Northern Lights Radio Society -
SINGLE-OP ALL LOW -- K0MHC