09/15/2005 | KE5ELU This was my first ARRL VHF contest. After getting my first 2 meter all mode radio a couple months ago, I had plans of getting a Yaggi up for the contest and making a lot of contacts. Well, after the Hurricane hit things got busy for me. I didnt get to start on the antenna until Saturday about noon on the day of the contest. Luck being what it was, my idea of mounting it on my roof didnt work out. So for the contest, I ended up mounting the beam on a tripod with rotor and using it inside from my upstairs ham shack. I finally got things kicked off with my first contact logged at 19:50 UTC. There was not much heard until about 1:58 UTC. I worked a few stations up until a little after midnight and I called it quits. I got up early Sunday morning and made several contacts up until mid morning Sunday when conditions seemed to drop. I couldnt get much to happen after 14:30 UTC. All in all it was a great learning experience for me and a lot of fun. If I would have had my antenna up as planned things would have turned out a lot different. My two longest QSOs were 227 miles into from EM34 to EM54 and 162 miles into EM44. Im already looking forward to January. Hopefully I will have a much better antenna set up and maybe even some other bands to work.

73 -- KE5ELU