Before the September contest the rotor loop coaxs and about half the antenna runs on the main VHF tower were all replaced. The 432, 222 and 1296 antenna phasing harnesses were replaced as well as the 902 and 432 preamps. The top 2M antenna broke in half and had to be rebuilt and one of the 902 antenna brackets was cracked. Spent a lot of time on the tower and did a lot of work. Everything seemed like it was all working great again for that contest, but conditions and participation were down. I was so disheartened after all that work I didn’t post a score or a summary on 3830.

Everything kept on working great and was still working well a week before the January contest. But I checked again on Weds night again and 2304 was dead. Thursday was rainy and when I looked up I could see that new rotor bundle had come apart and some of the coax’s were dragging against the rotating tower top gear 80 feet up. I got up the tower Friday to find the 2304 and 6M rotor coaxs damaged and full of water. I had enough time and stuff on hand to replace one but not both, so I drained and dried 2304 the best I could on the damp windy 35 degree day (wind chill had to be like ten) and taped up the damaged spots, but it turned out to be non-starter.

6M tried a little to open to the NE at the end of the first hour but went right back down again. Conditions were mostly flat but at least they were not noisy. The lack of 2304 didn’t seem to matter much, nobody was in range anyway. Activity on that band and 3456 has never been stellar from here and is declining. I don’t work nearly as many on 902 and 1296 as I used to 5-10 years ago either.

None of the Chicago rovers made it out and the snow/sleet/rain on Sunday kept the hill toppers home and challenged some of the Iowa and Minnesota rovers who did make it out. Those rovers really did a great job of going to lots of grids and being accessible.

While January is never the best time for meteor scatter, even the rox seemed they like they stayed home. Fortunately I made a lot of skeds before the contest and worked most of them because random CQs on 50.260 were almost nonexistent. I didn’t hear nearly as many of the Michigan and Ohio stations I usually do and for a while was wondering if I’d even work EN63!

That said local participation was actually pretty good and I worked a lot of SMC guys who got on for a little while especially on Sunday evening on 6M. Had a few issues with a sequencer dropping the brick amp out on 222 and the rebuilt 902 preamp really doesn’t seem to hear any better than not having it at all, but for the most part the station did OK. More repairs to do for June … sigh … it never seems to end.

Oh BTW ... if anyone cares .. with the publishing of the 2014 Aug UHF results K2DRH has taken 1st place overall as a single op (LP in ARRL and HP in CQWW VHF) in 50 VHF/UHF contests since 2001.

73 de Bob