2008 ARRL VHF QSO Party - Wire Antenna
My six-meter adventure starts with an FT-897D and LDG auto tuner and some 300 ohm twin lead cut in the G5RV configuration. The 2008 ARRL June QSO Party was on and out of curiosity I tuned the wire with the tuner and before I knew it I had worked 39 stations in 30 grids. Not bad for my first day but the plus was I worked K0HA Bill in Nebraska which was the last state I needed for the ARRL Worked All States award.

2009 ARRL VHF QSO Party - Rotatable Dipoles
I then began work on a rotatable dipole for six meters. My first one was two pieces of ½” aluminum tubing from a discarded Bimini top from a boat, a PVC tee fitting, and a piece of treated 2X2 mounted to a TV mast. I never could get it tuned just right so decided to make one from 2 hamsticks mounted to an aluminum angle. I used it in the 2009 ARRL June QSO Party where my scores improved significantly, 107 QSOs and 59 grids. This was not good enough for me but better.

2010 - Yagi
On the night of 5 Jun 2010 I decided I needed a new antenna with gain to do really well in the contest. I had an 11m beam that was given to me new in box without any hardware but a lot of usable aluminum tubing. I quickly moved things around in the dining room and proceeded building a driven element. Soon I found that I could not get an accurate SWR reading with this thing lying on the floor. I decided to hang the little monster from the chandelier chain where I was able to get it tuned. Using the EZENC software I soon came up with a director/reflector configuration that would work well with my configuration. I built that too hanging from the chandelier in my dining room. I looked at my clock and it was 1:30am so I decided to get some rest.  I woke up at 4am the next morning and got back at it again. Shortly after daylight the antenna was tuned great and I needed to get to work on a mounting / rotator solution. Off to the junk box where I came back with three Alliance U100 rotators and two Alliance U101 controllers. From this batch off old parts I got one set working. If you have not ever used these they are probably the sturdiest small rotator ever made and they work in both the horizontal and vertical configuration. I then proceeded to look for a place to mount this antenna. I knew I did not have the resources to mount it above my HF yagi at this time so back to EZNEC to figure the most efficient height. The software came back with 15ft. I did not have a 10ft section of mast but I did have a 5ft and a 6ft piece so I mounted the rotator between them. The only way I could get this mounted at the minimum height was to bolt the mast to my children’s now abandoned swing set tree house.
Between thunderstorms that day I got it mounted, coax and rotator cable run, and now was ready to test. When I hooked it to the radio I was expecting 1.3 to1 SWR and was pleasantly surprised to find that between the elevation and the coax the initial readings from the analyzer had brought
down the mismatch to less than 1.1 to 1 SWR across the whole CW and SSB area of the band. It had been less than 24 hours since I had initially started the project on paper and now I had an operational six-meter yagi with gain!

On the Air
The weather was too unpredictable to attempt an on the air check that night but the next day I saw spots for New England on the cluster. I turned the antenna northeast and started tuning the band quickly I heard a station calling CQ on CW and it was a VE2 from Quebec, Canada. I worked him with one call exchanged grid squares and was in business. Shortly after I worked W1UR in New Hampshire, a state I needed for 6m WAS. The next few days I ran the antenna through some more tests waiting for the contest over the coming weekend. I worked an XE2 in grid DL92 in Mexico and heard an EA8 station in the Canary Islands

2010 ARRL VHF QSO Party
Our club had a meeting the morning of 12 June 2010 so rest before the contest was not going to happen. I did not start operating until 1930 UTC but I jumped in with both feet. Conditions were good and within a couple of hours I had broke my score for 2008 then within two more I had matched my 2009 score by 0300UTC when the band seemed to fizzle out for the night I had exceeded the score of the 2009 4th place entrant from our section. The next day I got up and was calling CQ as the sun rose. I worked a few nearby grids before the band went long and was amazed at how the propagation areas shifted as the sun went higher in our sky. We had a solar storm that was killing all propagation on six meters nationwide sometimes for an hour at a time but I continued on. I finally worked a rover station in Arizona, another new state, but I never made it across the Rocky Mountains. When all was done I had made 269 QSOs in 120 grids which were over twice the contacts from the year before and four times more than 2008.
I hope this essay will inspire some of you to work with what you have and try your hand at building and trying something new. A lot of fun can be had with a little ingenuity and effort.

My dog DiXie and I have fun working with the new antenna on six-meters. It is too bad I have to be the control operator for all her QSOs. She has been given 59 reports when I only get 57.
73 K5MOZ
Chris