Recovery from last year’s lighting hit is almost complete but it has been a huge struggle made even more difficult by my work schedule. Seems they scheduled a late refueling outage that was extra long due to major turbine generator overhauls that really put my tower work behind schedule. The snowy cold winter complete with early spring snow really set me back, and then the wet windy and unseasonably cold April/May didn’t help out much either. I could not get it all done before the outage and found it necessary to climb at odd hours after working 12 hours days to take advantage of any good weather. Finding more stuff that needed repair didn’t help much either.  

I was still finding stuff broken a week before the contest when the pressure to get back on line was keeping me at work even longer than the usual 7/12’s. I had to climb the day before the contest twice and again Saturday morning to get the 2304 and 3456 all working but a shorted SMA T/R relay coil diode blew up the sequencer 24V relay feed and shorted it to the 12V to the preamps … of course poof went the preamps, or so I thought. I had to do a work around kludge up with another sequencer and a 3456 bypass, but miraculously the 2304 preamp still worked! Not for long, it quit Sunday, but I can still hear without it. They worked well enough to make the few microwave QSOs that were out there to be worked.  

The 902/3 transverter suddenly quit on Tuesday morning just before the test during a great tropo opening. Which of course, we had NONE of during the contest. Contest weekend prop obviously had other ideas. FEDEX got it to DEMI on Weds and Steve magically turned it right around, but it did not come back on Friday since the usually killer reliable FEDEX had bungled it in transit somehow. Of course it turned up and they delivered it on Monday!  But while that easily cost me 25K in points, apparently the seemingly endless hours of Es from just about everywhere to TX ate my lunch anyway.  One year during the ARRL contest I’d like both the sustained opening to W1,2,3,4 as well as the mult rich western openings that we had during CQWW 2006. Worked over 1400 6m QSOs that year in a much shorter contest that left the band still open Sunday afternoon, so I know I can get it done!  

The contest really started off dead here. 6M was teasing in bursts and folks seemed to be hanging out there just waiting for it to open rather than looking for Qs on 2M. The starvation from the previous weeks of mostly flat 6M Es conditions probably didn’t help much either. Tropo conditions were depressed and any distance was pretty much unworkable above 432. In fact even 432 was a struggle. I found myself working the multis at 2000Z in the afternoon, something I usually reserve for the middle of the night since they are always available. 6M opened to FL and the DM grids in AZ around 2030Z and the fun began, but FL was spotty and pretty much dried up around 2300Z. When the runs got slow I tuned to the DX window and worked a few Caribbean stations after a couple came up in my pileup. The band started jumping all over out west, but to a lot of small areas that don’t sustain big rates. No W1/2/3 on Saturday at all, where the rates for me are so much better! Worse I had to climb twice in the afternoon to clear a stuck rotor motor. One brush clip had worked loose and was arcing up the inside so that had to be resolved by cleaning out the carbon. Who says radio contesting isn’t a physical sport?  

6M was open to AZ/NM and sometimes further west but didn’t hear any TX all day Saturday, where there are actually some stations to work. By evening it was still spotty open out west and jumping all over, but by 0100Z I knew I had to get going on the higher bands. But tropo conditions were still really bad and the multi band stations to work were just not there (still playing on 6, calling CQ and not wanting to QSY). I find that even the best intentions to “catch you on the other bands later” usually winds up to be never. The rovers were scarce or too far for the conditions so I kept going back on 6M and mult hunting as well as running in small bursts that would quickly dry up. Then it seemed like everyone went to bed instead of going to 2M! It was hard to find folks to work! I hadn’t made many WSJT skeds because I wasn’t 100% sure I’d be able to contest with the restart schedule so close to the weekend and the complexity of getting a new turbine up and running. It wouldn’t be fair not to show up.  There were some randoms but not very many, seems a lot of the east coast multis didn’t play this year.   When I went to sleep for a few hours I left it monitoring to see who was out there, but only recorded a few and was able to catch most of them in the morning.  

Very early morning Sunday before 6M opened again tropo was very good and I made the most of it. I had a great SSB QSO with W5ZN after our random WSJT on 6M (we could have gone SSB) that led to a bottom four band run out 450 miles, but 432 was still down a whole lot. However 6 was already open by 1300Z so it really didn't give me a chance to put a lot in the log before everyone disappeared again. Again to the west (sigh), but no W1/2/3/4 at all until much later in the day. Doesn't take long for me to work out all the 5s, 0s and 7s in an area, and its a challenge to hear the weaker double hop from the far west 6s and 7s through the 40 over RF wall from TX and AZ. I heard many TX and AZ stations running at a good clip that were pretty much full scale even with the IF RX attenuators in. W1,2,3 was only open for one or two short bursts in the afternoon and apparently I  was not as loud as the 5s when it did.  Mostly it was overshooting the population zones and going further east so I’m sure I missed some Eu but I was not looking to be on the wrong end of any pileups. I had to take a backseat to the 8s and 2s several times to some western mults while I was mult picking so I know it must have been good there for them. Hardly heard any 4s at all and even when I did CQ in that direction any response I got quickly dried up.  

So rates never really hit anywhere near 2006 levels here, and it was slim pickings again on 2M and above in the evening because 6M was still cranking right up to the end of the contest. Worst 2M grid count in quite a long while, have done much better in January! About an hour before the end Wayne N6NB in DM05 called me in a lull to say I was consistently loud out the west coast all evening, yet most of my calls were going unanswered! AB5Q John talked with me right after the bell and said I was the loudest and most consistent station into NM all day, even running 200W (it’s the aluminum amplifiers), but it dries up way too quickly to the DM grids after short bursts and I worked a LOT of dupes.    

The new DEMI 6M transverter survived being crunched in between two obscenely loud TX stations (60 over plus) and I was still able to hear most of the weaker ones, so I'm more than thrilled with the RX.  It was really solid, much better than anything I’ve ever used before. The previous DEMI was really quite good and better than any integrated rig I’ve ever tried, so this is just amazing performance. But I may have to hardwire a TX PTT around the internal sequencer since it chops off my first few syllables.  Whenever I did have a good rate going I noticed a lot of stations would repeat their call again even though I got them right.  When the juices are flowing it takes a LOT of concentration to hesitate a second after you stomp.

73 de Bob2