02/01/2006 | KG6IYN After the kickoff to 2006 VHF / UHF Contesting Season almost two weeks ago, it's difficult to imagine how things could have been any better than they turned out to be ... So, let me hop up on my handy Soapbox and describe how contesting works - Southern California Style .... (Is it an Article or a Blog?)


Friday (the night before Contest Day One)-

Made it out of work about 3pm local time drove home and started to pack up the Nissan "MCV" (Multi-Purpose Contest Vehicle) in record time (step and repeat of successful processes works wonders). Had dinner with Family, and then headed out in the dark to my regular roost.
Arrival at site about 11pm local time - no unpacking, just grab the sleeping bags and blankets to hunker down for the evening.

Overnight low temp, 11 Degrees F


Saturday Morning -

Up about 6am local time, sunrise is still half an hour away behind some of the taller mountains to the East of my location. Breakfast bars and steakhouse beef jerky are the ingredients for "the most important meal of the day". Sodas and Frappuccino's left outside upon arrival last night "to get cold" have either exploded or are frozen solid.... Generic Lemon Lime sports drinks round out the meal.

7am local time -

Vehicle unpacking, general staging for antennas and construction begins. 220/432/1296 antennas go up first to take advantage of the usual "lull" in winds on the hill before 8am. 50/144/902 antennas go up next on my improvised 8 foot tall tripod mount (AKA, 8' Aluminum Ladder). Verticals for 50/144/220/432/900/1296 go up last. Outstanding items for deployment are the 2304 Andrews BBQ Dish, as well as the common 802.11 "yagi-in-a-tube" for close in work. 10 GHz is still a 4" "feed horn" directly mounted on the DB6NT brick, and mounted on a piece of plywood (which still affords 100 to 200 mile contacts just sitting up on the roof of the Nissan on a good day).

11am local time -

It's worth noting that I have "never" really started one of these contests on time. In fact, it's usually five to six hours in to the contest before I'm on the air. The situation has been slowly improving, but I'm still not there yet...

I have most of the coax and heliax run through the drivers side passenger window and I am starting to hook up switchboxes and pre-amps. By Noon local time, I have the radios out, coax and power connected, and I'm finally hitting power switches and listening to the transceivers crackle to life (quietly hoping I haven't missed any band openings or large number of potential contacts). I'm also starting to hang microphones from the rear view mirror in numbers that that resemble Christmas Ornaments on a fully loaded tree. Last steps are to "sync up" the two rotors so that headings are common between the two stacks of yagi's and then to get the contest laptop running for score entries.

1:15 local time -

I'm performing a few quick radio checks with the locals, making sure the antennas are looking good on the watt/swr meters and making sure I've set the laptop time against WWV ... at or about 1:30 local time I start logging my first contacts.

Prop is good in to the Greater Los Angeles Area and my first contacts are with K6VCR/R (actually a neighbor of mine that joined the W6XD/N6NB Rover Pack this year) and N6MU/R. Traffic at my start is mostly locals with a couple of adjacent grid squares, but at about 2200Z I did work W6OMF on 222 with light Es (about 520 miles). A series of contacts to CM94/95 follow on 6 and 2 meters, as well as the "usual" traffic to the east in to Phoenix and Scottsdale (DM33/43) on 6/2/220/432 (path is about 300 to 360 miles to my east). Late in the afternoon, the Es to the north along the California Coast picks back up and it's armchair copy time for CM97 and other grids north from San Diego ...


Things to note -

No wind to speak of - not since 0600 local time anyway. It's sunny, clear and the weather (although only 50 degrees now) is cool but very pleasant. A significant difference from this time last year when 50 to 70 MPH winds were the norm throughout the contest.

I actually have seven radios running - different from last year this time when I was depending on handhelds for 222 and 900 because I couldn't get the yagi's up. On that same thought, Holy Cow! - I have Six Yagi's up already! I know, there's someone out there (or several someone's) that think this is probably child's play or rookie stuff - but bear in mind I do this Solo and in all kinds of weather from this location. This is the part where lessons learned and repeating previous successes makes a world of difference.

Contesting continues throughout the afternoon and it's starting to get dark and cold again at about 5pm ... still no wind but the temp is already down to 40 ...

It's dark at 7pm and the contesting has slowed a bit - radios remain on for occasional contacts and to provide much needed heat to offset the cold. W5COM checks in about 10pm to see if I'm okay because it's "starting to get cold" ... at the time it was still about 32 degrees. I'm QRT about 11pm....

Sunday Morning -

Up at about 5am local time because several of the locals are getting an early start at calling "CQ" and hoping to be the Early Bird. I'm eating Pop Tarts and Energy Bars; washed down with Soda (left inside the vehicle, but still plenty cold) while the local fishing expedition continues on the bands...

Overnight low was 24 degrees.

Sunday Afternoon -

Another fine day on the hill, but local weather forecasts are predicting 40 to 60 MPH winds, with local, stronger gusts in the mountains (yeah, just great) by late afternoon or early evening. I contact some of the other locals on adjacent hilltop locations to let them know the potential exists for a "challenging teardown". At about 2pm local time, just as the rover packs and mobile teams have started operating on 1296/2304/3456/5.6/10g and up, the winds have started kicking in at my location -

Most of the other stations have gone silent in my hilltop "neighborhood" by about 3:30pm. I am working under the presumption they have heeded the wind advisories and or were packing up in advance of darkness and much cooler temperatures. I have spent the better part of the last couple hours tightening the ropes and guys that are going to hopefully keep my antennas up overnight for a "graceful teardown" on Monday Morning. It's now far too windy to even put the 2.4 GHz Andrews Dish up on the roof, much less the 10 gig rig so I'm missing all of my potential new contacts and grid squares on those two bands.

Sunday Night -

Now it feels like last years contest in reverse. The winds are blowing harder than I have ever experienced at this location - including the battle I had with them in 2005. I have made three phone calls to local Hams trying to engage them an "emergency antenna" detail to get the aluminum down in a safe manner. It's dark, but I have plenty of lighting, however its late and not unexpectedly difficult to entice someone to drive an hour or more to the middle of next to nowhere for a rescue mission ... The wind gusts are far stronger than last year, my handheld anemometer is showing hits between 65 and 80 MPH now ... not much to do except huddle up in blankets and see what happens tomorrow morning. This really becomes a test of portable antenna deployment engineering vs. Mother Nature as the evening progresses.

Monday Morning -

Not much sleep for obvious reasons. I'm not concerned that the mast mounted to the back of the Nissan will fail, but I am very concerned that the two 4' aluminum mast sections that are above the Ham IV Rotor might. There's a fair amount of money in M2 antennas at risk. The winds do not fail to break in tradition, so just before actual sunrise, the winds really start to increase. I have already re-tied guy ropes about a half dozen times overnight to compensate for stretching and despite the amount of tension on each guy, there's still a huge amount of sway and movement in the assembly. In hindsight, it was probably the little bit of "give" that prevented the upper mast from bending or breaking. Much warmer last night, only down to 29 degrees, mostly due to the "Santa Ana Winds" that have been the bane of my January Contesting efforts from this location.

At about 8:30 am I take advantage of several "calms" in the wind that have each lasted about three to five minutes apiece - running around to get all of the guys detached and allowing a successful and safe "Return to Earth" for all of the Yagi's. By 11 am I have the vehicle packed and I'm making my final rounds for site inspection and cleanup. At Noon, I'm back on the Interstate heading home....


Cool things

There were more "locals" out for this contest then I can recall for the past several years - a trend I hope continues and grows as 2006 continues.

It was a January Bonanza for working Rovers that activated a large number of grid squares that usually have little to zero hits for contests throughout the year - I can only hope this was a practice run in anticipation of the June Contest !

Most significant change in scoring - as expected, with little to no propagation in the Southwest Corner of the US, my "best band" was 2 Meters, with 6 and 432 almost tied for contacts and grid squares. Most improved scores were on 222 and 902 - I think the current contacts and multipliers for both are the highest for any contest entered so far. The "high bands" (2304 and up) were a bust this time around - too much wind (and too cold) to be standing outside trying to work the locals and regional folks from this location (have to develop a strategy for this going forward).

From this location in DM12 and a couple of the other "adjacent" hilltops within a 10 to 25 mile radius, you can "always" work the folks in Phoenix or Scottsdale, Az. on 50/144/220/432 - and once in a while on 1296. I'm looking forward to having the "bottom" 10 bands ready to run for the June 2006 Contest to see if I can work the higher bands on that 300 to 360 mile path.

As above, from this location, despite being up in the 'hills and having to squirt your signals over rocks and dirt instead of those folks fortunate to being closer to the coast doing it over water, there are frequently times during the contest where 400 to 600 mile paths towards Northern California occur ... with little or light Tropo / Es aiding the effort.

Normal "reach" from DM12 is DM33/34 or DM43/44 from San Diego to Arizona and from DM12 to CM87/97 or CM88/98 in Northern California on the bottom four bands with the equipment as pictured. Any "good" Tropo or Sporadic E adds grids and multipliers for the areas in between and or just beyond those normal boundaries.

A "modest" station or mobile setup, with about "half the yagi" lengths I run should expect to make similar contacts to the East, and almost the same range to the North if you have patience and then the luck to catch the prop enhancements when they occur.

Bumping the power on 902/927 to about 150 watts afforded contacts in the 100 to 200 mile range, on a very modest 14 element antenna. Moving from 120 to almost 300 watts on 222 netted a contact in CM98, with several "near misses" on completions with a station in DM09. Setting the '910 and '706 to "scan" through the FM Simplex Frequencies netted about 40 "incidental" contacts I may have otherwise missed. All fun stuff while it lasted to be certain...


Bottom Line - (reasons to try this, at least once)

A simple mobile station, even with vertical antennas can successfully compete in San Diego, and if you're in the right class (i.e., Portable) with limited time and equipment, you're likely to win a Section Award.

Folks wanting to do this can start off as a single or possibly as a dual band effort. Many of the locals only compete on one or two bands, which still make them eligible for Single Band Awards in the Low and High Power Categories.

More "exotic" efforts are often as easy as adding a couple of smaller Yagi's as a replacement or upgrade to the horizontal loops many new folks or Rovers will have already been using - with a big performance improvement once you find your personal "groove" or good location.

Being a smaller operator in a contest like these affords you much more time to experiment with locations as well as operating intervals - less time to set up or teardown offers all kinds of operating flexibility in location or hours invested. One of the local contest winners last year competed only during commercials during Sunday Football...

All of your contacts and grid squares add up and count toward your VHF/UHF VUCC Awards - and what a better time to operate, knowing there is focused efforts on these bands during the contests.

It's fun - if there isn't any propagation, and it's only you and a handful of others on the bands, what a great time to be able to relax (off the call frequencies of course!) and rag chew, comparing operating notes and strategies, as well as hopefully encouraging the "lurkers" to join in and be part of the fun ...

73 to All, see you in June!

(I welcome comments, if youd like to provide feedback, send to my call sign via the ARRL forwarding service) -- KG6IYN