Another September Contest in northern New England with sub par conditions. Looking at the weather report, it was clear that there would be no tropo to speak of. I had been working on the gear all Summer trying to get the station ready for another multi op effort. Over time, things just tend to go bad. My goal was to rip into every band and check for weak spots. The good news was that there was not much (antenna wise) that was really bad. With 11 bands and multiple stations for some bands, the total is something like eighteen separate stations that are on the air, with a total of 80 different antennas. Getting them all in 100% top shape takes all Summer.

The big problem was the 3456 MHz antenna, with the array on top of a big mast on a 120 ft tower. The winter storms had ripped one yagi apart. I ended up replacing all four phasing cables and repairing the bad antenna. That was a neat job climbing through the 903 array, the 2304 array, then the 1296 array just to get at 3456 way up on top of the mast. While up there I checked all the bands. Lots of sun tan lotion and a broad brimmed hat were used as the Sun and heat were brutal.

Saturday of the contest produced simply awful conditions to the west and southwest, about as bad as it can get. Working the normal stations became very difficult. On Sunday, things got better and the impossible stuff on Saturday became barely possible on Sunday. All the rigs on each band were firing on all cylinders all weekend. No big problems noted. The new large high voltage supply on six meters worked fine, as did the revamped 432 power supply. With conditions so bad, we spent much extra time trying to get contacts into the log. The demands on the gear went up as the duty cycle increased, but they all held up just fine. Aside from a balky rotator, no problems were noted. The late night period on Saturday was spent calling CQ on meteors and running some skeds with mid west stations on six and two. Our success rate was about 50%. We had a great crew of operators here, and we all enjoyed each other's company. Art K1BX, Pete K9PW, Fred N1DPM, Steve N2CEI, Sandra K4SME, Joel W5ZN, Ron WZ1V, Steve N1JFU, Dave K0DI, Al WA1T, and Dave K1WHS made up the crew at the station. We planned on taking turns with the cooking, but it ended up with Sandra K4SME doing the lion's share of the meal prep. Thank goodness as we ate very well. I know if I had been the cook, our score would have dropped with the many cases of food poisoning I would have caused.  The two pups, Leika and Beagle Bailey did a great job keeping the grounds cleared of food scraps. We cooked chicken on the grill on Sunday and Bailey managed to get covered in hot grease (again)

Many of our plans for the higher bands unraveled, but we still did a fair job with 5 and 10 GHz, snagging just over 20 grids per band. Not a lot of DX worked on the higher bands, which was disappointing, but we did work some 1200 mile scatter on 6 and 2 meters. No tropo to recount at all. It felt like January instead. In the midst of the brutal conditions on Saturday, I heard K1RZ in Maryland talking to someone on SSB on 903 MHz.. He heard me call, and we quickly worked up thru 2304 and then the band dropped out. A later try with Dave, K1RZ, on 432 was a squeaker with very weak signals and many repeats. Hard to believe that 2304 MHz can out perform a kilowatt 432 station. We ended up with much less of a score than we got in our last September effort. I chalk it up to poor conditions as I think the gear was all working OK and our operators were all trying very hard!! We stayed in the chairs all weekend, but Mother Nature came out on top. Better Luck in 2011! All in all it was a great weekend even with the poor conditions.