[ILQSO] Contest conditions

[Hank Greeb]

Jim:

Your impression is very similar to mine.  20 almost nil, 40 great, and 
80 could have been better had more folks taken the opportunity to use 
it, or use it earlier.  I was at the four county corner of Champaign, 
Douglas, Edgar, & Vermilion counties, with a "modest" portable antenna - 
an 130' centre fed inverted V, 32' in centre, ends at about 5', with a 
120° angle at the centre of the radiator (used the two wires as 2 of the 
three guys.)

I worked

 17 Contacts on 20 Metres
146 Contacts on 40 Metres
 92 Contacts on 80 Metres
255 Contacts total  (times 4 for the four county line, but these were 
"unique" contacts)

In retrospect, I might have stayed on 20 a bit longer, and worked a 
couple more DX countries, but I was naive and greedy for rate, so moved 
to 40 for most of the contest, only checking 20 every so often.

Things were getting slow on 40, so I moved to 80 at 2120Z, and found a 
few stations, but not many, but all with reasonable signals.  Seems to 
me that with the contest ending at 8 p.m., there are only 2 "evening" 
hours, so moving to 80 a bit earlier than one would expect might yield 
more contacts.   I alternated between 80 and 40 (and my warm automobile) 
until about 2300Z.  After that I stayed on 80 metres for the duration, 
except that the "warm up sessions in my automobile" were getting longer 
as the temperature dropped and the wind continued.

73 de n8xx Hg

Note:  A nearby local ham, Bruce, K9LOF, not in contest, but with a 
reasonable home station, confirmed my assessment of 20, 15, and 10.  He 
said there was a bit of activity on 15 with a DXpedition, but not much 
else, and 20 metres was "stinko".   He helped me with setup and 
teardown, plus gave moral support during the 8 rather freezing 
hours....  :)

James Funk wrote:

>My impression of band conditions:
>15: zilch
>20: some propagation but could never get anything going...missed a lot
>of expected mults...mult count pathetic as a result!
>40: couldn't have asked for better
>80: pretty decent, but unexpectedly low response the last hour
>VHF: not a factor
>
>This was admittedly a biased analysis, from a mobile in the west-central
>part of the state.  YMMV VWLTOP 73, Jim N9JF
>  
>