ARRL September VHF Contest - 2020
Call: K1TEO
Operator(s): K1TEO
Station: K1TEO
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: FN31/CT
Operating Time (hrs): 27
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 285 62
2: 285 54
222: 100 34
432: 147 42
903: 30 21
1.2: 56 24
2.3: 24 15
3.4: 14 13
5.7: 9 8
10G: 9 8
24G:
-------------------
Total: 959 281 Total Score = 434,426
Club:
Comments:
Fun contest this time with good activity and good condx at least locally
Saturday and Sunday morning. My QSO total and score was the highest since 2012.
I attribute the QSO total to a combination of FT8 activity (lots of new
operators especially on 6) and the enhanced local condx that allowed me to work
some stations out 200- 400 miles not normally workable.
The opening Sunday morning was interesting. I actually didn't work any real DX.
We were pretty much right in the middle of the enhancement so the band was above
average 400 miles SW and 400 miles NE. Interestingly the duct was probably going
right over me as I listened to some QSO's between MD/VA/NC stations and stations
NE of me and they were giving much better signal reports than I was rxing. So
the main advantage of the location of the enhancement for my QTH was that there
were more stations on to work. In fact it was fun to have QRM on 2M Sunday
morning with stations all over the band, something that used to routinely be the
case but has disappeared with lower activity in recent years.
At the start of this year I added a separate 6M radio so I could monitor FT8
when operating other bands. I was using a foot switch to key the rig so was rx
only when on other bands. This summer I automated it so I could be on 6 while
elsewhere and that made a big difference. That worked well to add to the 6M Q
total. Now if I could only pay more attention while running microwaves -
numerous times I worked someone on 6M FT8 but wasn't looking at the separate
computer so didn't click on Enable Xmit to keep going. Had a lot of lost callers
including numerous new grids lost because of this. Something to work on for next
time! I believe this is the first time ever that 6M Q's are as high as 2M in my
30+ years operating at this QTH when there are no Es on 6. Clearly FT8 has made
a big difference in what can be worked and activity.
Overall, I made about 22% of my QSO's on FT8:
Band FT8 MSK144 SSB/CW
50 150 28 107
144 54 2 229
222 2 99
432 3 144
WSJTX was not used on the microwaves hr. 6M scatter condx were pretty good after
midnight. I likely could have worked a lot more grids if I had more time to
spend there. Also, I am sure my 2M FT8 total could go up if I spent more time
there. I didn't really operate 2M FT8 at all most of Saturday as I was too busy
to do so. For the first 9 hours of the contest it was steadily busy as by 11 PM
I had almost 500 contacts. I worked a total of 535 QSO's the first day and 424
Sunday.
It was great to see K8GP back out as many have noted. W3ICC did their usual
great job. Other rovers worked included VE3OIL, VE3SMA, WB2SIH, AF1R, KJ2G,
NF2RS, N2SLN, KA2YRA, N1QDQ, and N2DXT. Tnx guys for heading out and making the
contest a lot more fun for the rest of us!
Tnx for the Q's and to the ARRL for sponsoring.
Jeff K1TEO
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