ARRL June VHF QSO Party
Call: N8RA
Operator(s): N8RA
Station: N8RA
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: FN31 CT
Operating Time (hrs): 14
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 406 119
2: 76 28
432: 14 7
-------------------
Total: 496 154 Total Score = 78,540
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
The contest started off Saturday like many June VHF contests. There was
some sporadic E on 6M. "Ground wave" conditions were not too good but the
grid counts were slowly filling in OK . Activity seemed down on 2M.
Sunday morning was again typical. Picked up some more grids on 6 and 2M, and
made a few on 70cm. E's were in now and again on 6M.
Sunday afternoon, activity really got slow, so I left the shack for a few
hours to go do other things, just checking the bands every hour or so. When
I came back around 21:30Z, I heard a station on 6M working a European.
Ohmigosh! Jumping back in the chair, I managed to dig around the band and
logged a dozen grids out of Europe, a couple of VO1's and a T4. There also
were a couple (and only a couple) of stations in the SW USA that I could
hear; quite odd but interesting. When that seemed to be fading away, the MYL
called dinner and after a leisurely meal on the front porch, I debated
getting back in the chair or quitting for the night. Getting back in the
chair won (of course). Good thing too!!
Six meters had come back with strong E's out to the Midwest. A bottomless
pit of stations was worked with an occasional double hop contact out to W7
and W6 and a few VE's too. The N1MM logger displays the beam heading and
distance to each grid as it is entered, and that is very helpful to check
that the antenna is pointing in the right direction. When the distance to
some stations being worked started to get down to 500 miles, it meant the
ionization was intense, and I had read (but never experienced) that this
might produce some E skip on 2M. It was hard to take an ear off the 6M run
frequency, but a left ear check of the 2M calling freq found a W7 in South
Dakota coming in at 20 over S9! Two other stations in SD were also worked,
putting three new grids in the 2M total. CQing on 2M did not produce
anything else. Back on 6M I occasionally mentioned that 2M E's were
happening, hoping to get a few more folks to move there, but did not hear
any more on 2M. The SD stations were strong for what seemed like an hour,
since I kept going over to 2M now and again as I ran 6M. The E's on 6M
lasted until the end of contest at 11 PM local. In the last couple of hours,
the peak 1 minute rate was 300, the 10 minute rate was 102, and the 60
minute rate was 66. Fantastic!!
Chet, N8RA
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