CQ Worldwide VHF Contest
Call: K2DRH
Operator(s): K2DRH
Station: K2DRH
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: EN41vr IL
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 286 117
2: 129 51
-------------------
Total: 415 168 Total Score = 91,392
Club: Society of Midwest Contesters
Comments:
It has been difficult this summer to work on anything or to dry anything out
since it has rained so much. Besides spawning tornados, Midwest thunderstorms
bring huge atmospheric electrical charges that cause corona related rain
static. This tends to be hell on tower amounted preamps even when the device is
diode protected. This year it has been necessary to remove and repair several,
including the 2M preamp. Twice. The first one went about 3 weeks before the
CQWW contest during a big storm. The second one only lasted 2 weeks and blew in
the middle of the night when the preamp wasn’t even on. Of course it was fixed
before the contest.
6M Es started out slow this year and has apparently tapered off from there.
Conditions for the June contest were pretty lame. Es conditions for CQWW VHF
weren’t much very much better. And while we enjoyed some very good 2M tropo
to the east the week before the contest, by Saturday it was gone in a hot and
humid haze.
Saturday saw good Es for TX, but very few openings to anywhere else. TX to MW
openings bring rather poor rates and you are constantly being jostled by
someone you just worked trying to shoehorn in above or below you. It moves back
and forth constantly to slightly different areas with even more 5’s popping in
and calling CQ 1 or 2 kHz away while others fade away for a while. Apparently
stations in TX like to CQ because they know the population density will support
bigger rates, and they quickly fill up the band. The ones who can’t find a
spot only come at maybe a 30 or 40 per hour rate if you’re lucky. And
generally if I don’t keep the other VFO moving up and down the band while
holding a CQ frequency, I’d never even work some of the stations that post
the big numbers.
Rates only go up if it opens to areas outside Texas at the same time. Not much
luck with that on Saturday. TX was in for hours with the same stations rising
up and down locked into the same spots. Sadly for me FL didn’t seem to be a
player and I only worked a few stations from there. I’d get an occasional
flurry to the DM or DN grids but none of them lasted for more than a few
minutes at a time. No double hop at all. It was frustrating at best, but at
least there were Qs going into the log. There were a handful of local rovers to
track too, so I kept busy.
2M conditions on Saturday were abysmal. By 8PM there was hardly anyone around
to work. WSJT was decent and the PJ page and ON4KST were helpful since the
current rules were an initial a step in the right direction. But it’s really
hard to stick to CQ frequency and sequence when most casual contesters seem to
just ignore that and just do what they normally do to facilitate Ms contacts,
like put in a direction or a mode. And while useful, it gets pretty confusing
pretty quickly and pretty hard to strictly abide by the current rules when
folks insist on posting such helpful details and thanking you for the QSO (damn
ungrateful big contesters). The discussion and comments on the rules and
comparison with the new ARRL rules were really amazing and it took a lot of
self-control sometimes not to post anything but frequency, sequence and the
occasional DX spot. Looks like changes may be inevitable.
There are usually a lot of stations to work early in the morning on 2M but it
was pretty sparse despite a marked improvement in tropo on Sunday. Luckily it
got better as the day progressed and a lot of NAQP RTTY contest guys who were
absent Saturday got on to play and a few hilltop portables came on the air.
NAQP seems to really put a dent in VHF contests. Tropo enhancement to the north
and west was good for me and I worked quite a few stations in grids I don’t
normally hear.
Unfortunately it was poor to the south and I missed a lot of grids there. There
was a lot of rain tracking form the south to the east. Morning Ionoscatter and
Ms seemed very good. Later it was productive to call CQ on 6M since
W1/W2/VE1/2 and sometimes the Atlantic coast would pop in either on ionoscatter
or sometimes an Es bubble. The prop seemed very low angle, spotlight and for the
most part not very strong or long lived, and ebbed and flowed over a few hours.
High point of this contest for me was working K2LIM in FN12 at almost 700 miles
on 6M then trying for a second time on 2M in the last hour and actually
completing a CW contact on 2M. Equally exciting was getting several strong 2M
signals from EN01, EN00 and EN10 and also working them on 6M. The last half
hour things seemed to collapse for the most part and CQs went mostly
unanswered, but all in all it was a pretty decent contest with a lot of
interesting micro propagation. And while the score is low due to 6M not being
all that cooperative, conditions and participation seemed not nearly as bad to
me as some have reported.
73 de Bob2 K2DRH
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