09/10/2018 | K2DRH

Well my hopes of getting my main VHF/UHHF/SHF tower fixed in time for the Sept VHF contest were dashed. During the 222 and up contest my rotating tower top started binding and stopped turning putting me out of the running. Subsequent investigation determined that all the years of turning so often lining up VHF and microwave long boom antennas during contests even in high winds and subzero weather had not only worn a deep groove in the cam follower bearing race, it even distorted the bottom half of the of the lower (and oldest) steel guy ring. I just plain wore it out after almost 20 years of VHF contesting and over 55 VHF contest wins. Far as I know I’m the only one to ever wear one out.

While the top half is OK, needless to say it the bottom half must be replaced. There is a custom split guy ring design for those that don't want to take down and restack an existing tower, so I need the split bottom half. Initially K0XG thought it was gonna take 2 weeks to get the part made but the current steel fabricator that he uses has not made a split ring before and only makes his stuff on a secondary basis to his normal business. Unfortunately he has gotten busy and we are still waiting for it with no definite ETA yet. When it finally arrives we have to cut the old one off the tower and install it, but at least I don't have to take all the antennas off and unstack the tower to do it.

So while this contest couldn’t be a serious effort for me with most of my antennas stuck at 110 degrees (the best direction for parking the 30 some and 50 foot booms to mitigate thunderstorm wind damage), I got on to give out as many points as I could to those I knew submit logs. Unfortunately this isn’t a really great direction for the prevailing activity and was pretty much opposite to the rover activity. Even so I was able to reward a few stations and rovers with 222 and 432 band mults, some after great effort to hear me. I have another tower with the 6M 8x7 array (but of course there was no Es to have fun with) and a short boom 9el at 25 feet for high angle close in meteor scatter work that due to some local enhancement really worked out a lot better than I expected, but was not really able to reach out the long distances my higher long boom 2M antennas can.

I had 6M FT8 running but I made very few contacts, mostly to those I knew were competitors and that I could QSY to 2M. I did do some MSK144 but didn’t stay up late or get up early like I usually do. Didn’t even log a lot of casual contacts or ask for band changes from stations that were not competing for score as I normally would since I wasn’t scoring either. Got into a few ragchews with stations I normally can’t take the time to. My logger says I actually operated for 8 hours, but it was so slow it felt like a lot less. I made time for meals away from the rig with N2KMA and even a little TV. Although all my bands were working, I made no contacts above 432. It was definitely different! I had to list here as my normal SOLP since there was no checklog option, but I’m submitting as a checklog.

One rover K8JH/R I got on 2M kinda threw me a little. I asked if he wanted a Q on 6M and he told me the other op was busy on FT8 and I should look for him there. That struck me as odd since I’d seen the call on my screen but not with the /R in any of the exchanges! So asked him why not and he said it was too much confusion to run as /R on FT8. I asked him then how stations were supposed to log him on FT8 that would never know he was a rover, but never got a reply. The rules still require signing /R and if he files a score as a rover then all the stations who logged him without the /R will automatically get a busted call! I worked him on 6M FT8 but didn’t log the contact as /R because he never sent /R (you log what you “hear”)! Never heard him again but I wonder how many got messed up or didn’t call him in a new grid because the logger said he was a dupe? This FT8 Rover problem really NEEDS to get fixed!!!

73 de Bob2 K2DRH -- K2DRH