ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes
Call: K2DRH
Operator(s): K2DRH
Station: K2DRH
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: EN41
Operating Time (hrs): 32
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 135 48
2: 157 44
222: 42 22
432: 88 33
903: 14 14
1.2: 26 17
2.3: 3 3
3.4:
5.7:
10G:
24G:
-------------------
Total: 465 181 Total Score = 133,216
Club: Society of Midwest Contesters
Comments:
Saturday dawned cold and snowy after a restless night spent waking frequently to
the sound of sustained 40 MPH winds with higher gusts howling through the guy
wires. Having already lost the bottom 50 foot boom 6M antenna in early December
to an even stronger wind storm, it was amazing I slept at all worrying about
whether there was any aluminum left to contest with up there. Had to take that
one down in three pieces after it ripped out the center of the boom to mast
plate and hung from the truss, flailing in the wind folded up in a triangle.
It?s a twisted wreck now, sticking out of a foot of snow in the side yard,
waiting for parts. Not sure what category of amateur radio fun working on a
tower in sub freezing windy weather fits into, but I?ve certainly had a ton of
it recently. Of course the other one still has the same kind of plate and sits
above the 222, 432 and microwave antennas, hence my reason for worry. Guess I?ve
finally built it big enough.
In future years whenever I complain about a slow January contest, please remind
me of 2005, a new low water benchmark for terrible Midwest contest conditions. I
like flat conditions for the January Sweepstakes; it gives my station a level
playing field so the QSO quantity challenged location on the Mississippi River
between Illinois and Iowa has a chance to prevail through multipliers, the true
distance scoring reward. But conditions on Saturday were several notches below
flat. The snow and wind continued until late afternoon, resulting in periods of
almost unbearable snow static. The antennas were oscillating in the wind so much
that some stations sounded like they were spin modulated. Turning to the east or
west put such a frightening bow in the long booms that I concentrated mostly to
the north or south for the first few hours. I hit a wall between 222 and 432
that signals wouldn?t penetrate. This wall would gradually lift above 432 as the
day went on, but the bands above that were really terrible all night and most of
the day on Sunday. There was nothing workable out past Chicago where the snow
and windstorm system was still active. Even the Chicago area stations only 100
miles to the east were way down from normal.
The hardy rovers of the Midwest are not easily daunted by ordinary cold and
snow, but the blinding whiteout conditions apparently kept the regulars who
activate lots of bands in their garages safe from the winds. Rumors of rovers
getting antennas torn off their cars by the wind were apparently substantiated
when N0DQS got on 2M from home to tell his tale of woe. I didn?t work any rovers
on Saturday and only heard one rover active to the east on Sunday. This
definitely conspired to keep scores lower than usual. Contacts on Saturday were
few and hard fought, and the higher bands were almost non-existent in every
direction. Normally strong stations were weak even on 2M, and the normally weak
ones just weren?t there. 6M contacts were difficult and I sorely missed the
extra gain of the stacked beams. I?d installed a mast mount preamp on 6M for the
first time in hopes it would compensate for a little of the lost gain, but it
failed open the day before the contest and I had to climb up 110 feet to
retrieve it in 20 MPH winds and bitter cold. Actually I?m really glad it failed
when it did since there was no way I wanted to even think about climbing on
Saturday!
The one bright spot was Saturday night meteor scatter. I?d made several WSJT
schedules and stayed up later than I?d planned making several more random QSO?s
to try and make up for a log that was easily 100 Q?s and 50 multipliers behind.
Random QSO?s on WSJT seem to have come into their own, and it?s not difficult to
QSY to other bands. But this and the previous night?s disturbed sleep made for a
very grumpy Sunday morning after only 3.5 hours between the sheets. Sunday saw
another early morning round of good WSJT skeds (one of which I missed because I
nodded off in the chair, sorry Russ) and a few more randoms. Sunday tropo on the
bands started out slow and tapered off from there. Conditions were better, but
still less than flat. The stations were just not there to work on Sunday morning
and the slow hours continued well on into the afternoon.
It?s really disheartening to tune 2M during a contest and hear nothing in any
direction, then call every 15 degrees while turning the antennas completely
?around the clock? on 144.200 with no takers. I kept looking at my running total
and shaking my head in disgust. I was slumping from the brutal beating of little
sleep and slugging it out in the chair under the most difficult conditions I?ve
seen since moving to EN41, while my tower muscles ached. Unexpectedly things
began to pick up, slowly at first, until there was a steady stream of stations
to work during the normal late Sunday afternoon lull. Shaking off the cobwebs
wasn?t easy but there were Q?s to be made up. Conditions improved considerably
and the absorption blanket on most of the higher bands lifted, but there was
still a marked drop in signals from 903 to 1296 and pretty much nothing at 2304.
The points and multipliers were finally going into the log however.
The last hours of the January contest are usually pretty dead with few new
stations to work up until maybe the last hour or so. This year 2M seemed loaded
with stations from 0000Z right up until the end. It was difficult to work them
all since most were clustered right around the call, and a QSY to other bands
from anywhere within 30 KHz of 144.200 would result in a lost running frequency.
Normally the world pretty much ends plus or minus 10 off the call here except
for a few multi-ops, but even the casual contesters were calling. Unfortunately
CQing from more than 30 KHz away yielded dramatically slower results and it was
necessary to keep running back to the call or near it to attract fresh batches
of stations. Still, it was nice to see things spread out a little.
For the last few hours 2M finally came alive with stations trying to make up for
lost time. I?ve rarely heard this kind of concentrated contest activity since I
left EM64, where I often heard lots of stations to the north working the Mid
Atlantic up and down the band while I strained to get their attention off the
back of their antennas. I could hear stations as far as EN91 to the east, but it
was hard to catch them since they were working right into Chicago when they
pointed my way. We are just not used to dealing with that kind of congestion out
here. Luckily I found several grid multipliers that I could work on multiple
bands. 6M was a good place to escape the madness for a while and there were many
stations to run the bands with there too. The last half hour was a free for all
shootout right on the 2M call, with multiple stations working in all different
directions.
73 de Bobtwo
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