Band Mode QSOs Grd
50 FT4 4 2
50 FT8 129 56
50 USB 95 48
144 FT8 42 22
144 USB 7 2
Total Both 277 130
Score: 42,380
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
The June ARRL VHF contest had been a bust here. I was looking forward to
this weekend's CQWW VHF contest after my crippling line noise appeared to
have now been eliminated, there were no major weekend commitments, and the
station equipment and operator were in good repair. 6M had been exploding
for weeks with E's every day and lots of activity on all modes.
I managed to spend 14 hours of chair time and had a blast. Started the
contest a bit late and 6M E's were present in full force. CQing on SSB, 52
Qs and 35 mults were logged in my first 45 minutes. But the E's were spotty.
Most sigs were strong but came and went quickly. Some minutes I was working
3-4 per minute and then there would be nothing for quite a while One K9
station commented that I was the only station he could hear on the band.
Patches of thunderstorms moving through the area were causing steady S3 QRN
with peaks to S8 every few seconds making it impossible to hear the weak
ones, and often requiring many fills on the strong ones.
After 10 minutes of no more answers on USB, I moved to dueling FT8 on 6M and
2M. This got a little crazy when the two bands got out of sync and I had to
terminate one or the other to stop transmitting simultaneously. Sorry if
your Q was aborted.
When signal strengths on 6M got strong again, I'd go back to dueling SSB CQs
on 6 and 2 and usually picked up another dozen Qs before that ran out; then
back to FT8. I tried FT4 a few times and it made the QSO fast and efficient,
but very few stations ever came there. Odd.
Europe was in abundance, but not for me. I kept one 6M antenna northeast but
only occasionally saw a very weak single decode of a European. A look at DX
maps showed the European paths all going overhead and landing in the midwest
and south, but not here. Oh well.
During the last few hours on Sunday the 6M E's became weak and few and the
contest became a tropo event. Many surrounding grid multipliers were now
worked as ops moved their antennas to hunt in other directions. The start of
the last hour was very slow and I considered quitting. But by hanging in
there, another 17 stations and 5 multipliers were worked, again proving it
pays to keep BIC to the end. Quite an interesting weekend.
73,
Chet, N8RA
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