[AK-VHF] January VHF Contest vs NFC Championship

[Edward R Cole]

Paul,

It was a light turn out which not a surprise in January.

Wx for roving was terrible so none did that I am aware of.  We had 
16-inches accumulation of snow Tu/we/th and rain all day Friday in 
45F temps.  Janet could not drive all the way up the driveway Friday 
afternoon due to the 5-inch snow pack that turned soft in the 
rain.  Saturday afternoon I spent shoveling the slushy ice off the 
lower end of the drive so I could move the van back onto the road and 
get a run up to the house (70-feet).  A neighbor took pity on me and 
came over with his small john deer 4wd tractor with front bucket and 
scraped the drive clean up to where we park in front of the 
garage.  Today temps dropped to 29 and everything is refreezing.

I worked three stations on 2m FM and one on 6m ssb.  A couple of the 
better stations in Anchorage were out of state or just leaving at 
contest time so there were stations we could not hear in Anchorage 
that were worked by others up there.  My main transmission line to 
the 2m eme array is shorted so I could not transmit and had to use a 
single 11-element 2m yagi, instead.  I could receive on the eme array, though.

The bad transmission line is shared by 2m-eme, 900, and 1296 antennas 
so was not QRV on any of them.  I had good reception on the 222 
transverter on Friday by locking the tower-top TR relay into Tx and 
bypassing the preamp on the tower.  But somehow blew up the 
transverter Rx on Saturday using a TR relay in the shack.  So no 
222.  I could have made at least two contacts in two grids on 222.

432 has high SWR for a few months and tower base is covered with 
5-foot of snow so big job to shovel out a 15-foot path thru 
that.  Then we have winds when it is warm making climbing dicey.

I would consider 112 contacts super good for AK.  Most I have had is 
about 30 or so with 6m Es opening in Junea few years ago.  I could 
log about 20 on 2m eme if that was working, but I probably have to 
remove a connector and shorten some bad hardline and reinstall the 
connector in 30's temps (with 60-foot slog thru knee deep snow, 
before).  That is all hardened after the rain onto snow and 
refreezing so may give it a try tomorrow if wx permits (more snow predicted).

But I appreciate the folks who turned out for the contest up 
here.  Just not in the cards this year.

73, Ed -KL7UW

At 10:02 PM 1/19/2014, Paul Kiesel wrote:
>Howdy All,
>
>Yes, indeed. I did miss some hours of the contest watching the 
>Seahawks-49ers game on TV. Wow, what a white-knuckle spectacle, eh?
>
>
>Actually, I missed other hours of the contest doing less interesting 
>things, but I did spend a respectable amount of time in front of the 
>rig, too. I scored only two (2) QSOs via sporadic E (both contacts 
>with stations in Colorado), but I was pleased to have any E-skip at 
>all this time around.  We did have a tight temperature inversion 
>over the Puget Sound Depression down as far as Southern Oregon, so 
>there was some decent tropospheric ducting enhancing signals even on 
>50 MHz.  Others did far better than I, but I finished with 112 QSOs 
>in 25 grids for a score of 2800 points. I operated on 50 MHz only.
>
>
>As usual, numbers of participants was low as compared to the June 
>contest, but we had a reasonable turnout here along the Northwest 
>Coast, from Campbell River, BC (VE7DAY in CO70) all the way to 
>Ashland and Medford, OR (K7BWH/R in CN72 and WB6FFC in CN82).
>
>I hope there was a good turnout for the contest among the AVG Alaska 
>members.  Don't forget to submit your log even if you made a single 
>contact during the contest. All the contest info is on the AVG 
>Contest page here:
>
>http://www.qsl.net/a/ak-vhf/Contests/
>
>73, Paul K7CW / VE7IB
>AVG Contest Guy
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73, Ed - KL7UW
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