06/16/2009 | W0ZQ/R Another fun June VHF contest has come and gone. I really enjoy roving in the June contest because of the long days, warm weather, and the corn is still just one foot high. This year I repeated the same route that I took during the years August UHF contest (Rovermania). On Saturday I visited the EN44/43/33/34 grid corner in far south east Minnesota near the town of St. Charles. While the weather was very nice for humans, it was not all that conducive for VHF/UHF propagation with somewhat cool temperatures and somewhat dry air. 6m helped to make up for the lack of high band propagation and it seemed at times as if this was the 6m contest. I did have some nice 10 gig rain scatter contacts with K0AWU at about 380 km as well as some nice 2, 222, 432, 902, and 1296 contacts with Bill as well. 222, 432, and 902 are really effective rover bands. On Sunday I traveled to just west of the Twin Cities to the EN24/25/34/35 grid corner and handed out some new, and somewhat rare grids. It was really nice to hear the great activity on 6m, especially in the CW section of the band. As a rover, its hard to get a good signal on 6m so I really like the increased activity on CW. Looking forward to seeing everyone in the ARRL's August UHF contest - aka Rovermania !

73, Jon
W0ZQ/R -- W0ZQ