[AK-VHF] January VHF Contest vs NFC Championship

Mon Jan 20 02:57:03 EST 2014

The VHF contests in the Anchorage area have been steadily declining  
since I became a ham 3 years ago. This was positively the worst one  
I've seen. I made 5 QSO's with three unique call signs. I was working  
from the same height as KL6M usually works (literally right down the  
street from him.) I would have rovered over to BP4, but with only two  
participants, I didn't bother. I've never understood why the turnout  
is so light for the VHF contests and yet we have such a relatively  
good turnout for the Tuesday night nets on VHF. Winter is usually our  
best or participation because no one has the excuse of being out  
fishing, as in the summer. It's a self feeding downward spiral. As  
fewer folks participate, few folks participate because no one  
participates.

-Shannon
On Jan 19, 2014, at 10:38 PM, Edward R Cole wrote:

> 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
> http://www.kl7uw.com
>    "Kits made by KL7UW"
> Dubus Mag business:
>    dubususa at gmail.com
>
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