Well Ellen.. You did 'Far better than I did'! 6M was a Complete 'Zip'
Here.. I was working 6M Pile Ups from DN39 on Thurs and Fri.. and warned
them this would happen! I managed to work WB2FKO DM65, N0KE DM69 and
VE5UF DO61,on 6M.. and KA0RYT on 2M MS Sked.. Sundays, our 2M Weak
Signal Group tries 2M SSB.. Lucky for me..! I got two more Grids! That
was a disappointing Contest for me.. Hey.. Next One I Say! Glad you
found the Rig Required for the Job..
See you Next One I Hope!
Jerry VE6CPP
DN39or
Ellen Rugowski wrote:
> Well, this years CQ WW VHF has come and gone. Condx. were mediocre the
> majority of the time for me. 6 was spotty at best for Es, giving us
> mini-openings at best. I was only able to work one station via Sporadic E -
> W5LCC in DM93. 3 minutes after I worked him, he dropped back down into the
> noise. Tropo was also a mixed bag for me. There was some enhancement on 6 &
> 2 from tropo. Signals on 2 were pretty good. No major long haul stuff, but
> Jerry, WB9Z was stronger on 2m than the typical EN60 stations I work here
> from the extreme northeast corner of EN52. Greg, K9KL in EN64 also had a
> very strong signal here. When the enhancement was happening (mainly on
> Saturday afternoon and night), I worked stations via tropo on 6m, that I
> normally have a very hard time working. Bob, K2DRH, and I completed on 6, in
> what has to be record time. I was only running 15W at the time. In the past,
> even with 100W, it's often taken several tries to work him. In a nutshell,
> the contest cond
ti
> onswise, was almost like the ARRL UHF contest. Sunday was very
> disappointing. The Hepburn tropo map indicated that we should get decent
> tropo today - that wasn't the case at all. I also lost about 4 hours of
> operating time,when several of my gabby friends decided to call me for long
> chats. Oh well.
>
> Setupwise - I set up portable on my apartment balcony (I live on the 2nd
> floor, on top of a hill). For 6m, I clip leaded the same rain gutter I use
> for HF, and used a 6m antenna tuner. It was cheesy, but it worked. For 2m,
> I used a 5 element 2m/432 log periodic from Elk Antennas on a homebrew stand.
> I wish I could have done a pure QRP effort, but the Yaesu FT-620B I used on
> 6m was the limiting factor. Like many rigs of its vintage (the late 70s &
> early 80s), it has no power adjustment option. So, I was stuck with 15W of
> output. In retrospect, I could have probably changed the internal ALC for
> 10W max, or tricked it via the back accessory socket with a 9V battery (if
> I'd known what pins to apply the voltage to [the manual gives no information
> on what pin does what]), but I didn't feel like opening it up, to make a
> change for 1 contest.
>
> As for 2m - I now am the owner of an ICOM IC-910H. I didn't feel like
> disconnecting my only 30 amp power supply from the HF rigs, so I used an old
> Astron RS-10A I've had since the late 80s,and throttled back the power from
> 100W, to about 20W (all the supply would handle - any more would cause it to
> kick out). I had a tough choice between the IC-910H and the FT-736R (I had a
> line on a few of them), but advice from a few other hams, convinced me that I
> should bite the bullet moneywise, and get the IC-910H. It worked great for
> the contest, giving me VHF & UHF capability, I haven't had in over 9 years
> (the only VHF/UHF rig I've ever has that was even close to this rig, was the
> FT-736R I sold back in 1999 to pay bills). Here's the run down of my
> semi-QRP effort:
>
> 6m 8 QSOs 5 grids
> 2m 19 QSOs 10 grids
>
> Total 27 QSOs 15 grids
>
> Score = 690 points
>
> 73,
> Ellen - AF9J
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>
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