Pretty slow here.

If you want to get to the contest description itself skip down, the first part details more of the ongoing saga of keeping a competitive VHF contest station afloat. The 222 transverter RX gain fell off a cliff during the UHF contest and it had to be sent back to DEMI. Steve tried really hard to get it repaired in time for the next contest like he always does, but the rabbit in his hat was on vacation. Something ridiculous like obsolete parts (hey it’s only 20 years old!). Luckily my fellow SMC members came to my aid in droves to offer me a choice of solutions in the way of borrowed transverters and even whole rigs!  I now have an extended loan from K9ZO (who plans to move in a year or three and has no 222 ants) of an almost identical DEMI transverter with fewer miles on it. Ralph had not fired it up since he got it used a few years ago so I hedged my bets by borrowing K9CTs new style one too, but never even had to power it up. Steve was able to get the 3456 up and working again and it arrived a couple days before the contest.

  Gerry at SSB Electronics USA is really good at repairing the preamps and sequencers from SSB and has taken care of me well over the years, just like Steve has. Preamps on the tower are always subject to tough conditions. One relay on my 902 preamp just wore out and it need some TLC. Unfortunately the manufacturer of the direct replacement relay elected to make the coil draw twice as much current as the old one so it would not pick up due to the voltage drop on the 150’ RG-58 control line up the tower, nor work with the limited current supply of the older SSB bias T sequencer. After bring it up and down a few time to test it, I put an interposing relay off the sequencer and fed the contacts with a variable voltage power supply and cranked up the voltage until the relays picked up. 902/3 is all good now up to the power divider for the antennas (probably 15 years old) but still doesn’t seem to hear as well as it used to. Not sure if it’s just that the background noise level (looking for a cavity filter) has risen over the years, or if the power divider coax is lossy. The return loss is good, but lossy coax will do that too so replacing it is next on the list.  

  I had some tower connectors on 222 and 3456 and a rotor jumper on 2304 go south to keep my busy in the abnormal early Sept heat (of course it cooled off when the work was done). While I’m glad I fixed them, it was a bit disheartening to learn that the only classic rover still operating in this area W9SNR was unable to go out, and W9SZ would not be QRP portable on his favorite hill due to moving across town. That really cut down on 2304 and 3456 QSOs here since practically no fixed stations have those bands in a 200 or even 300 mile radius of me. The only one I worked was W9ZIH on 3456, and on 2304 if it wasn’t for Mel and Carol KC0P/R and N0HZO/R who were out about 200 miles most of the time I’d have almost no 2304 contacts.   It’s even getting a lot harder to find guys with 222 or 1296 to work and most times I won’t even work my own grid unless I cajole my XYL N2KMA to fire up some old FM talkies and junk to give me a Q from the other side of the house. A good use of the Sunday afternoon doldrums.  

While a week before we had a tremendous Tropo event with strong signals out 800 or more miles, Saturday was more like the negative tropo conditions we get in January. No Es at all the entire contest and huge power line noise from the wind and a sudden daytime temperature change from the 90s to the 60s. To say it was slow would be an understatement and signals on all bands were way down. Lack of participation due to a rescheduled major DX convention in the Chicago area not normally on this weekend didn’t help much either. By the time the sun went down and conditions started to improve a little there were few stations around to work. 

  The new rules are great to set up digital WSJT Ms contacts but I still made several skeds prior to the contest. Set up quite a few on the PJ page and ON4KST as well as some direct contacts that put several otherwise new mults into the log. One cool thing was to be able to start up with W9RM in DM58 ten minutes early and actually completing both 6 and 2M before our prearranged sked time arrived! But the Ms activity on the chat pages died off fairly early (around 0700Z) and wasn’t all that great at 1100Z when I woke up and got back to it. Too bad since the rox seemed to be really flying after about 0600Z.  Worked W2SZ on 6M the old school way with 15 sec sequences on SSB.

Sunday morning conditions were a little better locally but still not very good out past 300 miles or so. ionoscatter on 6M seemed very good and it put a lot of new mults in the log out to 1000 miles or so. With rates in the low 20s per hour it was a slow and steady climb all day. Tracking the rovers via spreadsheet and cellphone made it a bit easier to catch them in each grid they visited. A few of the locals like NG9K/R and WK7G/R packed two or three bands into the car and went to some good places and visited a few hard to get grids. W9FZ/R scaled down to a 4 band limited rove but with the addition of his new XYL KA9VVQ/R it doubles up the Qs. The phone coordination thing is weird and a bit of a juggle when the call comes in the middle of a band run with somebody else, especially as the rovers scramble to make the most of their last grids. At one point I had a small cellphone pileup! 

  Sunday afternoon was slow up until the evening when folks that had been at the convention started getting on and suddenly it got hectic for a while playing catchup. Took half hour dinner break when WK7G/R stopped over on his way further south and we shared a quick brat. The tropo picked up a bit in the evening too and I was able to make more Qs on the higher bands, though skeds with more distant stations to work higher bands we missed before usually still fell flat.  

The last hour of the contest can be really dead or really good and bring some surprises. This was no exception when I suddenly heard W4NH multi in EM85 at 571miles on 2M with an S7 signal. We immediately set up and successfully worked on the bottom 4. KX4R in EM73 called soon after and we worked 2-432 but didn’t make it on 6M at 605 miles. I wanted to explore that sudden tropo lift more but the rovers were calling me with gifts of new grid multipliers and the last minute stations were checking in too. Made for an exciting but hectic hour! Caught run and gun rover K0DAS/R in a close by grid EN42 just in time to make a 2M QSO then QSY to 222 to end the contest on a new band mult. I know we could have done 432 but we just ran out of time. 

  73 de Bob2 K2DRH