ARRL June VHF QSO Party
Call: K1TEO
Operator(s): K1TEO
Station: K1TEO
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: CT/FN31
Operating Time (hrs): 28.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 550 187
2: 307 64
222: 110 40
432: 132 38
903: 57 27
1.2: 66 27
2.3: 34 20
3.4: 19 10
5.7: 14 7
10G: 16 8
24G:
-------------------
Total: 1305 428 Total Score = 873,976
Club:
Comments:
As has been noted many times already, this contest was heavily weighted toward 6
meters. For me it was somewhat a tale of 2 contests: the first good June contest
6 meter condx in years here in the Northeast, combined with some of the worst 2M
and up condx and activity in quite a while. Bottom line is a new personal record
- first time over 800k and 400 total grids - and a lot of fun with 6 and 2M Es
in the first few hours and hearing from so many long-term radio acquantances
over the course of the contest. Here's some observations:
E-skip
The contest started with the band open on 6. Intitially many Q's were in
Florida or the SE but it moved around to the Midwest and then upper Midwest
fairly quickly. Better yet there was lot's of double-hop coming through,
starting with the SF Bay area, AZ and XE2K, followed by the entire Pacific
Northwest. Never thought I'd work 7 VE7's in a contest without F2!
One of the dilemas early on was whether to stick with 6 or mix in operating on
the other bands, especially to work rovers. As good as 6 was I decided to
balance out my operating. I spent over half the first hour looking for rovers
with mixed success. As a single op running 10 bands it's a tough call what to
do when 6 is so good. The big unknown is how long will it last. The band ended
up being open for roughly the first 6 hours of the contest. I worked a little
over 3 hours on 6 meters during that time and made about 400 Q's. I worked the
rest of the time running around the other bands and made 80 Q's. 125 per hour
on 6 vs. 30 per hour elsewhere. I think some of the time spent chasing rovers
was well spent given these grids were often unworkable later on. I did spend
some time calling CQ on 2M which turned out not to have been the best use of
time. So, with hindsight, I should have spent more time on 6 meters. While the
band had some minor openings Sunday, the great opening did not recur. All in
all, 6 meters was a lot of fun with almost 100 double hop Qso's, likely the
most I've ever made in a contest. I also ended up working 47 states missing
only New Mexico and KL7/KH6.
As fun as all the 6M action was , the best part of the contest was getting in
on 2M E-skip starting around 2220z. I had just finished with a rover and took a
quick scan of 2M. There was Bill, K0AWU 40 over 9. Over the next 15 minutes I
worked a total of 12 Q's in 8 new grids. EN 07,08,16,18,36,37,45 and 66. I
believe either 3 or 4 of these qso's were with North Dakota. I've been
operating on 2M over 30 years and had worked ND only once on meteor scatter.
Wow!
Condx/Activity
The Hepburn Map showed a big black hole in its prediciton for the weekend. Not
something you usually see in June - not even a little purple.....From what I
observed, tropo condx for the first 24 hours of the contest were similar to a
poor winter day. That bad. For a long time I was thinking all of my antennas
must have problems. Sunday evening things finally improved to what I'd say are
normal condx and a lot of missing grids were filled in. The microwaves in
particular were very difficult this weekend. The cold wx (40's overnight) and
25-35mph winds really did a number.
Activity also wasn't particularly good this time other than on 6 meters. I've
noticed in the past that when 6 is good it really drops activity on 2 and
above. That's easy to understand in the first 6 hours here in the NE but you
would hope everyone would move over to 2 when 6 dies down. I wonder if the
casual ops "used up" their operating time on 6 or folks were monitoring 6 to
see if the opening came back vs operating other bands. Of course the really
poor tropo condx didn't help matters. My Q and grid totals were awful on 2M and
up until late Sunday afternoon when activity and condx really picked up. The
last 5 or 6 hours were extremely busy - and fun - running around the bands with
folks I hadn't heard all weekend. All in all my 2M and up QSO totals and grid
totals - especially on the microwaves - were a good deal down vs 2004 and 2005.
One thing that went very well was my WSJT skeds. I made just about all of my
skeds and most were extremely easy. The rocks must have really been flying.
Most of my 6M skeds weren't needed having worked on Es already. This was a very
efficient contest for wsjt with both success and speed to help optimize the time
spent on this mode.
1 Million points
Pete, K9PW, mentioned in his writeup about the quest to make 1 million points
for a single op. I agree that this contest was a good candidate for that
achievement. Unfortunately for me it would have taken a combination of better
tropo condx and better optimazation of the 6M opening to achieve this level.
Something to look forward to.......
Tnx for all the QSO's and the fun. It was great to hear so many long time
acquantances and of course a special Tnx to all the rovers who help make this a
lot of fun for everyone else.
73, Jeff K1TEO
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