01/20/2009 | K7CW Hello Everyone. I enjoyed working many of you in the contest. I also had fun in this contest. One negative thing was that the appearance of the sun brought on the powerline noise with it. Fortunately, it was narrow pulse stuff and my noise blanker took care of most of it. Also, I still haven't gotten up the tower to tend to my sticking rotator. This surely caused me to miss contacts. For instance, I was not able to work VE7DAY in CO70 on 144 MHz because of this. Sometimes I could hear John very weakly off the back of the beam, but there was no sense in trying to get him to hear me.

Just before the contest, I put out a query about someone to activate DN16. Well, many of us were happy to find K7HPT on several bands. While they were in that grid, I was able to work them on 144 MHz, but missed them on 50 MHz. But, guess who showed up on 50 MHz Sunday evening. None other than K7EI on a mountain near Lewiston, Idaho. So, I finally got my DN16 for 2 meters after more than 20 years of looking. Thanks to K7HPT, Mark, and his buddy W7OE, John, and also to K7EI, Bob, who I understand is getting back on VHF after moving from the Seattle area and building his house on the mountaintop over there. (Probably ought to try to get him to join the Society.)

Another highlight of the contest included a contact on 144 MHz SSB with Len, WA6KLK. I had been listening to N7EPD work guys on 144.2 when he made a sked with someone to go to 432 and left the frequency. So, I called a CQ and there was Len right there with a booming set of calls and a report. I quickly returned the same and got his "roger" as the burn faded out. Man, the timing was sure right on that one! And I want to thank Eric for moving off the frequency. Hi Hi.

I thought I would try 2m EME this time. I talked to Marshall, K5QE, before the contest. He suggested that I just show up on 144.142 MHz and call (along with everyone else). He assured me that they would work all callers. So I did. And, when my moon got to about 4 degrees above the horizon, I started to get WSJT decodes of K5QE calling CQ. So, I called and worked them quickly for points and EM31. Very satisfying. Later on, as I was reading email and otherwise monkeying around in the shack, I heard W7CE on the frequency. I didn't look to see who it was, assuming that it was Clay. But, a minute later, I checked the JT65A window on my monitor and saw that there was a decode of K1JT calling me. This was some 20 minutes after I worked Marshall. I thought it might have been a false decode, but I responded, just in case. And sure enough, it wasn't a false decode. They sent a report and we quickly finished that QSO with FN20 for another QSO and grid on 2m EME in the contest. That was icing on the cake as I was not expecting to work anyone else on EME. By the way, I'm still using my old KLM 16 element antenna that I bought 25 years ago.

I also decided to try to make some contacts on meteor scatter using the WSJT FSK441 mode. I checked the calling frequencies of 50.260 and 144.140 many times and call a lot of CQs there, but heard nobody. Finally, around 1500 UTC on Sunday, I checked 50.260 and found the frequency just jammed with signals. There were several callers on both first and second sequences (BC, AB, WA, ID, UT, OR, AZ and CA and possibly others). Also, to make matters worse, some folks were using FSK441 and others were using JT6M. So, I checked adjacent frequencies. Nope. everyone was on .260. I attempted to avoid the mayhem and called some CQs on .265, but got no reply there. So, I went back to .260 and selected the sequence that I thought would cause the least interferrence with locals. I managed to work W6OUU in DN22 and K7JIZ in DN40 before I decided to get out of there. A lot of contacts could have been made if everyone had spread out. Maybe some did make a lot of contacts, but I wasn't one of them. The same jamming up occurred on 50.125 and 144.200, too, But, that is going to occur when the band is lightly occupied. When I tried calling CQ on some other frequency, I got few replies. That's fine. I don't mind getting in there with everybody else.

I did have some luck on 50 MHz meteor scatter, though not as much as I would have liked. W6OMF said that he heard a lot of me. I did hear him once, loudly, and called him, but we didn't connect. I noticed that some of the W6 stations were sending CW quite slowly. This is not recommended when meteor scatter conditions are not optimum. I completed with only one slow-sending station. When you have pings of short duration, you have a devil of a time getting all your information across if you send slowly. I played heck with one SSB station, also. I could hear him in there weakly, but all I could get was "W6...". I couldn't get his whole call. It was like he was mumbling into the microphone. There is a good reason why folks need to sound enthusiastic when calling on SSB! I finally did work the guy when his signal came up on a big burn. Okay, enough on the soapbox.

Big signals that I heard were N7RYW (CN84), CG7IRA (CN89), K7EI (DN16), KB7W (CN93), N7SC (CN82).

Thanks to the guys who went out as portable or rover. Always appreciated.

I worked 3 new grids on 144 MHz; DN16 (yea!), EM31 and FN20. And a new state on 2m, New Jersey.

I worked a total of 22 PNWVHFS grids.

Here's the breakdown:

50 MHz - 102 QSOs 27 Grids 102 Points,
144 MHz - 91 QSOs 22 grids 91 Points

193 QSO Points x 49 multipliers = 9,457 Total Claimed Score

73 -- K7CW