[NLRS] 10 GHz Contest summary, WØJT -- L O N G

[John P. Toscano]

Well, it was an experience!  The 10 GHz and Up Cumulative Contest for 
2003 is now history.

I was unable to participate at all the first weekend.  I realize that 
you guys who went up north for that weekend had phenomonal propagation 
conditions and loads of fun.  Too bad I had to miss it.

For the second weekend, Bob, WØAUS was gracious enough to loan me a 
spare narrowband rig.  I'm not sure of the power output level, but it 
uses a 17 db horn instead of a 23 db dish like most of the rest of you 
are using, so I was not able to complete some of the more difficult 
contacts that my partners worked.

I picked up the equipment at Mounds Park Saturday morning, and worked a 
couple of short contacts with home stations.  Then Donn and I made a 
short jaunt over to the Capitol Overlook where I worked a couple of 
contacts back to Mounds Park, and Donn did the same after several WBFM 
contacts and at least one 24 GHz narrowband contact.

 From there we ran over to Idell Avenue, where we were challenged to 
work through the tall corn.  SSB worked fine, but Donn struggled with 
some more WBFM attempts.  I believe that he did not manage to complete 
any of them, but I could be wrong on that.

By the time we finished up at Idell, we were already late for our sched 
with Mel, Carol, and Jon, so we skipped New Trier and went directly to 
Chubb Lake.  From there, I made one easy QSO with KT8O, after being 
temporarily stymied by accidentally knocking the power plug to the IF 
radio loose while unclipping the microphone from its cradle, though I 
was unfamiliar enough with the gear that Donn had to point out the 
source of my trouble to me.  Then came my most challenging QSO's of the 
weekend that were successful.  It was a struggle, but I did manage to 
pull WØZQ, KCØP, and NØHZO out of the noise over the 138 Km path to 
EN33XP.  Those would remain my longest contacts for the weekend, 
although a few other contacts of around 100 Km went into the log on 
Sunday.  Thanks a whole lot for activating that location, it really shot 
up my score considerably!  Sadly, I could not hear any of those folks 
well enough to work when they moved to their next location.  After one 
more contact with WØAUS over a 74 Km path, it became clear that I had 
worked everyone I could hear who wasn't within a hundred yards of me, so 
I did the only reasonable thing, packed up and moved north to the next 
subgrid, and worked the rest of the Chubb Lake crew -- NØUK, WA2VOI, 
WØGHZ, WBØLJC, and NØNAS -- to insure the 100-point QSO bonus plus 4.6 
distance points from each of them.  Naturally, signals were so strong 
that with my lower-gain antenna, I made the last of those 5 QSO's even 
though a large truck barrelling down the road created such a gust of 
wind that my rig was blown 45 degrees off the proper heading!  (On 
Sunday, Donn came up with a good temporary solution to the problem of my 
rig being too easy to turn in the azimuth plane.)

Sunday morning, I got up at 5 AM to check the email for responses to my 
request for Sunday plans.  Finding no plans there, I decided to get a 
little more sleep, then be on the road by 0900 and monitoring the 146.46 
FM liason frequency.  As it turns out, my temporary 2 meter antenna 
setup on the vehicle was highly inadequate, and I heard no liason 
traffic to speak of.  After a quick breakfast and replenishing my 
gasoline supply, I decided to head out to the Burnsville site, since I 
had scouted it out once before and knew where it was.

I set up, dialed around, and was pleasantly surprised to find WBØLJC and 
WA2VOI in EN35JA.  Shortly thereafter, I heard KT80 on the liason 
frequency, and talked him into slipping in a quick QSO between his 
shower and his departure for church.  After Gary and Donn also worked 
him, I inquired about the plans for the rest of the day.  We decided 
that Donn would head south, and I would meet him partway and we'd run 
the rest of the day together, while Gary stayed north.  I could not hear 
those guys at all on 2 meters (my bad antenna problem), but we made a 
plan for where to meet on the highway to proceed together to New Trier. 
  As I would later discover, I pulled the plug on 10 GHz before hearing 
the end of the instructions, and set out, planning to call Donn on 2 
meters when we were closer together.

As I got close to the intended meeting point, I called and called on 2 
meters to no avail.  I realized that I didn't know the exact spot in the 
road where I was supposed to pull over and wait (or where Donn might 
already be pulled over waiting for me), and after some careful thought, 
decided it would be best if I moved on to New Trier alone, hoping that 
my GPS would allow me to find the site and the roads to get me there. 
Fortunately, it did the trick (I only made one bad turn and quickly 
recovered from that error), and I found the spot and set up.

Again, I was pleasantly surprise by being quickly rewarded with QSO's 
from WØZQ, NØUK, NØNAS, and with a little more work, KCØP.  To me, Mel's 
signal off the downtown buildings was down in the noise, but when I 
pointed considerably west of downtown, he came up well enough to work. 
I still have no idea what I bounced off of, because it wasn't until 
later that I turned the rig around nearly 180 degrees from that heading 
and chatted with him on the direct path with S9+40 signals.  He was, 
after all, only 15 Km away from me at the time!  The other good thing 
that happened was that I heard Mel talking with Donn on 146.46, so I 
asked him to relay a message to Donn telling him where I was.  Donn was 
concerned because he had been unable to reach me on 2M, and was pretty 
sure I had not heard the end of the conversation on 10 GHz when I was in 
Burnsville, namely the part where he told me how long it would take him 
to reach our planned meeting point.  (He was right, I had missed that 
part.)  So it all worked out just fine in the end.  He showed up at the 
New Trier site shortly therafter and worked the same folks I had alrady 
worked.  We then worked WBØLJC at 73 Km and NØUK, who had moved to a new 
location in the intervening hour since my earlier contact with him from 
there.  We waited for Gary ('LJC) to move to a new sub-grid and worked 
him over a 79 Km path, and caught Gary ('GHZ) at home for another 42 Km. 
  Before leaving New Trier, I would work NØUK in yet another sub-grid, 
KBØOZN for the first time, and WBØLJC in yet another sub-grid (95 Km 
this time).  Donn also managed a contact with WØAUS but I could not pull 
him out of the noise.  We packed up and moved to Cannon Falls, where we 
met up with Mel.  We quickly set up, I made 4 contacts of 111, 57, 62, 
and 53 Km, (Donn made a few more than that), then we quickly tore down 
so that both of us plus Mel could head off for Vasa and (we thought) Red 
Wing.

Unfortunately, at Vasa, conditions had deteriorated to terrible.  I 
managed no contacts at all (and I believe the same was true for Donn), 
although Mel did complete one QSO with WØGHZ and one with NØNAS, both on 
CW which sounded completely aurora-like.  We figured it was probably 
rain scatter.

Having been basically skunked at Vasa, we decided that there was little 
point in moving further away to Red Wing, so we called it a day.

I plan to check my math, but it appears that my submitted score will be
   1550.9 distance points
   1300.0 QSO Points (unique calls worked = 13)
   2850.9 TOTAL SCORE

This is a considerable rise from last year, when I had only managed 555 
points (as KBØZEV), although this is obviously a paltry score in the big 
picture of things.  If I had 2851 points last year it would have moved 
me from dead last in call district 0 to third-from-last in call district 
0.  And I know some of you guys have amassed many more points this year 
than last, so the bar is even higher!  Of course, I never planned to set 
any national or discrict records, I only planned to do better than last 
year, and to help increase the scores of the competitive folks in the 
group as much as I could.  I consider my outing a success on both fronts.

It was a pleasure to work you all, and to work WITH you all.  I learned 
a lot along the way, got to see some folks whom I hadn't seen in awhile, 
  and visited a lot of countryside that I had never seen before.

Thank you one and all.
73 de WØJT