I have been very busy with work and had no time to assemble my station for the
222 Sprint. I have been walking up to the shack lately as it is very wet and
the road is washed out and quite muddy in places. A truck would make things
worse. On 222 MHz I was having trouble even finding my transverter up in the
shack. Nothing was connected up. I did locate the transverter at 15 minutes
after 7PM and started HSU*.
I was on the air by about 8PM. (0000 UT) I heard only a few signals
including K1KG beating the band to death on CW. I had no logging computer and
no log ook, so my log is on a piece of scrap paper I found. The band seemed to
be in horrible shape with a wx front extending west to east and located just
south of my location. Signals were so poor that I thought that the antennas
were waterlogged as I had trouble even hearing the FN23 beacon. Normally it
peaks up at S5 to S7. Many stations were clustered around .100 and made things
difficult. I heard K3TUF call CQ at about S7 but could not call as another
station came on at 59+40 calling CQ. I never did find Phil again. I tried
calling W3GAB on SSB, but, as on 144 last week, he did not hear me calling. I
really started to wonder if my stuff was even working. I parked down about
222.190 and made some noise and slowly started working stations. I was
surprised to hear VE3ZV call in on SSB. I was using the LVA (8 X 5 el) and rapid
ly aimed the steerable array out west but had to complete on CW as the band
faded. Still it was gratifying to get EN92 with such poor band conditions.
Later on I worked W3ZZ in FM19, for my last contact with great signals. Gene
was running about S5 and solid on CW for my best DX to the south. K1TR was
super loud from the next grid, but I never managed to work him. I think Ed got
tired of the lousy conditions and quit early too. I heard a few other 2 land
stations working others, but never got them in my log.
I ended up with 25 contacts and 13 grids. Not much to show for, but I did
quit about 0130 as I was getting tired, not working anything, and it started
to rain and I had to walk home thru it. I figured I better leave before it got
worse. April has been cold, gloomy and very wet. I hope things start to warm
up. With temps under 40 degrees, it sure feels like winter still. I have some
repairs needed on 432 as the array VSWR is infinite at the moment. I have a
week to fix it.
73
Dave K1WHS
*HSU= Hooking Stuff Up.
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