2005 ARRL September VHF Contest
09/13/2005 |
K2DRH EN41
Saturday conditions were way down here. After an initial good hour, the QSO rate dropped way off. There was no propagation to speak of above 432 MHz and I had to ask a lot of stations to sked me later or the following morning in hopes that we could make contacts up there. From experience Ive found that unless its a multiop, generally leaving things to chance that youll run into them later without making a sked is a bad bet with maybe a 30% chance of success. It got a lot better in the cooler evening hours after the sizzling hot Midwest day, but the stations just didnt seem to be there to work and the microwaves bands were still way down. Most of my 903 and above skeds didnt work out above 1.2 GHz. Nice tropo directly to the north but unfortunately there aren't that that many stations to work that way. No enhancement the east or south and I had horrible power line noise to the west that gave me lots of trouble when I looked up towards the Minneapolis area. I was still dog tired from all the tower work Friday getting 3456 installed so I went to bed right after my WSJT skeds and missed out on the aurora Saturday night. Should have realized what the score was when I didnt hear any stations calling CQ on 50.260 WSJT, but it just didnt register!
Sunday morning conditions seemed fair and while there were no really big hours, QSOs went steadily into the log. No real enhancement anywhere, just normal flat conditions most of the day. High point was working KM0T 316 miles away on 3456 at 1:00 in the afternoon after failing to make it in the morning. Picked up a little 6M Au on Sunday afternoon before the band opened on ES to the SE. The Es was fun but since it stayed into FL most of the time, it was easy to work it out. Found myself CQing to no takers after a while, so would go back to 2M for a while, work a few there and then go back, find a new frequency and work a bunch more before it dried up again. Seemed like lots of mults, but not much depth and I would run out of stations to work pretty quickly until the band shifted to a slightly different area. During the 6M opening K4XR suggested we try 2M and was able to log him down in EM64 537 miles away on 2M CW ..... very weak but workable! Also worked K5YPV in EM54 at 488 miles on CW, however wasnt able to work anybody else.
2M was also less productive than it should have been on Sunday evening too since it seemed like a lot of folks were on 6M, hunting and pecking for Es stations despite the limited depth. Sunday after dark we finally got a little enhancement out to the east, but there were few stations to take advantage of it with since the stations out there seemed to be pointing elsewhere and unaware of us for the most part. Ive always found it difficult to come up the back of their antennas even with 200W! And the ones I did find were few and far between. Did work VE3FGU in FN04 (568 miles)who was astute enough to point west and call on CW. Ironically I ran into KB8U, who I didn't work, almost the second the contest was over! He obviously had one heck of a good time with the conditions at his QTH and really put in a killer effort! We tried to run on 3456 just to see if we could do it but the conditions still werent there.
All in all this was a frustrating contest for me. We didnt get much in the way of tropo enhancement out here. I was also disappointed that I didnt hear very many rovers on during the contest and consequently I didnt work as many higher band contacts as Id hoped. I was also down in strength a good bit on 2M. The amp that I normally use was working fine earlier in the week when we had a good tropo opening (I worked Pete at K3EAR in FM while he was getting the station ready). But when I went to set the drive and output levels down to 200W on Saturday morning before the contest, I discovered the amp had no output! Had to run with a tired old brick that only put out a little over 100W. Made it a lot harder to attract attention and I had to move my antennas around a lot more. Dont ever let anyone tell you being 3db down doesnt matter it definitely does in a contest! If you can't work them on 2M, you can't QSY them!
-- K2DRH
Sunday morning conditions seemed fair and while there were no really big hours, QSOs went steadily into the log. No real enhancement anywhere, just normal flat conditions most of the day. High point was working KM0T 316 miles away on 3456 at 1:00 in the afternoon after failing to make it in the morning. Picked up a little 6M Au on Sunday afternoon before the band opened on ES to the SE. The Es was fun but since it stayed into FL most of the time, it was easy to work it out. Found myself CQing to no takers after a while, so would go back to 2M for a while, work a few there and then go back, find a new frequency and work a bunch more before it dried up again. Seemed like lots of mults, but not much depth and I would run out of stations to work pretty quickly until the band shifted to a slightly different area. During the 6M opening K4XR suggested we try 2M and was able to log him down in EM64 537 miles away on 2M CW ..... very weak but workable! Also worked K5YPV in EM54 at 488 miles on CW, however wasnt able to work anybody else.
2M was also less productive than it should have been on Sunday evening too since it seemed like a lot of folks were on 6M, hunting and pecking for Es stations despite the limited depth. Sunday after dark we finally got a little enhancement out to the east, but there were few stations to take advantage of it with since the stations out there seemed to be pointing elsewhere and unaware of us for the most part. Ive always found it difficult to come up the back of their antennas even with 200W! And the ones I did find were few and far between. Did work VE3FGU in FN04 (568 miles)who was astute enough to point west and call on CW. Ironically I ran into KB8U, who I didn't work, almost the second the contest was over! He obviously had one heck of a good time with the conditions at his QTH and really put in a killer effort! We tried to run on 3456 just to see if we could do it but the conditions still werent there.
All in all this was a frustrating contest for me. We didnt get much in the way of tropo enhancement out here. I was also disappointed that I didnt hear very many rovers on during the contest and consequently I didnt work as many higher band contacts as Id hoped. I was also down in strength a good bit on 2M. The amp that I normally use was working fine earlier in the week when we had a good tropo opening (I worked Pete at K3EAR in FM while he was getting the station ready). But when I went to set the drive and output levels down to 200W on Saturday morning before the contest, I discovered the amp had no output! Had to run with a tired old brick that only put out a little over 100W. Made it a lot harder to attract attention and I had to move my antennas around a lot more. Dont ever let anyone tell you being 3db down doesnt matter it definitely does in a contest! If you can't work them on 2M, you can't QSY them!
-- K2DRH
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