06/13/2006 | WB2AMU Every once in a while, you hit that dream opening on Six Meters. In the past, I actually had a few good Sporadic-E openings that occurred during the VHF contest but for the most part, these openings tended to be short in duration and maybe a handful of stations can be worked. Prior to June of 2006, the last great June contest opening that I had was the first two hours of the June 1991 event.

Prior to the beginning of the contest, I worked a station in Missouri while mobile. I thought that at least there was a possibility of a decent Sporadic-E opening that might occur during the contest.

I operate in the QRP portable category and I go to the nearest hill here on Long Island which is 250 feet up with good line-of-site to all directions. It took about ten minutes to set up a three-element Yagi on a mast at ten feet in an umbrella stand to a FT-690 hooked to a portable battery. I could not set up the antenna any higher since it was very windy on Long Island and it was blowing on the antenna hard. With about three minutes to spare, I could hear that there was already some strong signals coming in on Six Meters .

When the contest began at 1800Z, there was major bedlam on Six Meters. Activity extended from the bottom of the band all the way up to 50.310 MHz! I used the two VFOs on the FT-690 with one set in the SSB portion and the other in the CW portion. I was switching between the two VFOs constantly because as a QRP operator, I know that I cannot hold a frequency so I have to resort to hunt and pounce tactics.

I was having very good success running CW and surprisingly on SSB, particular in the 50.200 to 50.300 MHz range. Double hop Sporadic-E was coming in and I picked up Tim, K7XC in DM09 on CW, twenty minutes into the contest! I was working many different grid squares at a clip, initially into the EM and EL grid fields for the first hour and by the second hour, both EM and EN grid fields.

I fully expected the opening to abate after an hour or so, but surprisingly, it kept going for several hours. During the second hour (1900Z), I ran a string of 33 stations, which is a very good rate for a QRP station. At two hours into the contest, I worked three consecutive stations via double-hop Sporadic-E: W7GJ (DN27), VE5ZX (DO62) and VE5UF (DO61). It was truly amazing how my puny Ten-watt signal broke the pileup of two-land stations on W7GJ. I realized that I had no hope of breaking the pileup using SSB, so I used a standard QRPer technique of calling Lance using CW. On the second shot, Lance says, Who is that station on CW? Then I came back and he worked me, despite the fact that there were kilowatt stations that were calling him on SSB!

I have never heard so many stations on at Six in my life, except for Field Day of 1998. There were between five and ten stations at a time on CW in the CW portion of the band and the QRM was incredible, making it hard to copy some stations, particularly if there was QSB on the signal. I worked stations as high as 50.310 such as N4JH. Also, there were a lot of rover stations in the 4-land call area that were ready to be worked!

I had to take a short break to run an errand and when I came back to the hill at 2200Z, the band was still open, this time to EN, DN and CN grid fields. I worked WD0T (DN94), K7RAT (CN85) and NU7J (CN88) via double hop as well.

By 2330, the band quieted down. It was a blur to me where I just looked for the strongest signal in the clear and often could work them. For the next day, I got up to the hill again at 6:00 am local time to try to work local grids via the four bands that I had. The band opened to Eastern Canada by 1400 Z and I picked up more new grids that I needed. The band died by 1500Z. Later the band opened to the south and I picked up seven more grids in the EL, FM and EM fields that I needed.

I worked over 110 QSOs on Six Meters covering 74 grids for the contest! I picked up some valuable multipliers on Two, 220 and 432 as well, making this my best QRP portable effort ever! -- WB2AMU