[ADXA] VHF Contest

[WB5JJJ]

To say the least, this weekend was interesting.  Here's the SHORT version.

Of course, the VHF Contest was in full swing this past weekend.  6m was,
for the most part, nothing like earlier in the week when it wasl wall to
wall signals on the Waterfall.  Yes, digital modes were all I had as I
heard NO SSB or CW signals any time I checked.  I know lots of you did
nothing but those modes and have great scores, bur for me, it was dead pan
alley away from FT8 / FT4 modes.

Thursday and Friday, I worked on my software interfaces and had everything
working as I wanted.  WSJTx being the primary program, closely followed by
JTAlert and culminated into N3FPJ's VHF Contest Logger.  I used HRD's Rotor
and Rig Control elements as well.  I did not use the HRD LB as it is not a
very good contest logger since it doesn't do any dupe checking and such.

Saturday morning, I rechecked everything and it all seemed good.  But by
start time, things started to fall apart.  Kept getting rig control errors
and could not keep the USB splitter program working properly so I could
feed WSJTx and N3FPJ the frequency information.  Not a big problem as I
would be operating on just a couple frequencies and those were stored in
the adi file created by WSJTx.  Set N3FPJ on 6m and Digital and was off to
the races.

John (BHS) and I spent most of the contest chatting on Hamshack Hotline as
we chased that next contact or multiplier and comparing notes as we moved
forward.  He had a new homebrew 6m dipole up that seemed to work
fantastic.  He was hearing 2x or more stations that I was.  I did see an
Ireland and an England station, but could not make contact with either.
With all the metal I have up, I was only able to work Mexico and the
Caribbean area a few times.  The vast majority of contacts were, as
expected, in the NE of the USA.  This seems to be a hotbed of activity.  FL
finally came into view a couple of times and got lots there, but most were
in just a few grid squares (retirement areas).  At times, PSKReporter was
showing in excess of 300 stations that were coping my signal.  Sometimes in
a "starburst" pattern from EM35.  Other times in a very directed pattern
whichever way my m2 5 element monoband beam was pointed.

Sunday afternoon, my Internet began to become less and less usable until it
finally totally crapped out.  During lunch break, i reset the DNS servers
in my Router and that seemed to fix it.  Looks like Google's DNS servers
might have been overloaded or hacked.

Got my logs uploaded to ARRL about 5 minutes after the contest was over,
and imported into my HRD LogBook, then to eQSL, QRZ, ClubLog, HRDNet Log
and LoTW.  Had to reconfigure all my software for normal operation, so that
took another few minutes.  By 22:15, I was DONE.

My final tally was 230 contacts (kinda weak showing), 129 multipliers with
a submitted score of 29,670.  As the end was near, I was hoping for 30,000,
but things started to slow down the last 30 minutes or so.  I guess guys
were just wearing down.  At the slow start, I was hoping for at least 200
contacts, but things were up and down, so I got a few more.

-- 
George - WB5JJJ


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