[NLRS] June contest

[gmitch]

Hello everyone, Wanted to thank those that I got to work from EN14 and 24,
The contest was not one of my more productive contests. Started out near
Grand Island,NE.  Conditions were not good and to top it off heavy
thunderstorms kept popping up all around me and seemed to be moving several
directions, lightening static was terrible. As I headed north toward SD I
drove into another storm coming toward me ( will have some pics on my
website within the next month) I could see the classic wall cloud and green
clouds and before I knew it I was getting clobbered by hail! (this was
between Fullerton and Albion,NE.) I Pulled off the main road and tried to
protect the antennas from the hail by ducking under a large tree (then I
thought how dumb that was with all the lightning and high wind) by the time
it let up the ground was covered with mostly golf ball size hail and the
roof and hood showed the damage. Also had to straighten some of the elements
on the loop yagis and 2 meter yagi.( I later found out via the news that a
tornado went thru less than a mile from me)
After this storm I drove into another with smaller hail but it left drifts
next to houses in the next town I came to (Albion,NE as I recall). Also had
a long stretch where flooding on the highway was a problem as well as 6
inches of mud and debris washed onto the highway. Got thru that and the
weather cleared (this was early Sat evening) did some operating from EN01
and 11  and headed north to SD and all the way I was watching another what
appeared to be a stalled front in my path, sure enough about the time I got
to Mitchell,SD it was just about on top of me so I secured for the nite (2
am local) and when I got up and 5 am local it was storming (lots of
lightning) and it did not let up till just  before 10 am local. After seeing
the pictures on TV of a local Deputy Sheriff and what happened to his
cruiser when lightning struck his VHF antenna (it disintegrated the antenna
and blew the back window out) I was not going to go out and set on some high
spot with the rover. So I ended up running thru the rest of the grids a bit
faster do to the lack of time and did not make all the grids I had planned
on. All of the equipment worked well except 6 meters at the beginning of the
test. Worked several more 10 gig q's as well as more grids. Had fun working
N0KP on 5.7 and 10 as well as all the other bands from EN14,24 as well and
most of the bands with W0GHZ, I apparently did not have a real good path to
Gary. I did hear some calling me when I was in EN22/23 but time and
schedules were short. As I said conditions Saturday were terrible, 2 meters
was real poor and to top it off you could not hear do to lighting.
Well there is always the next one, I hope to do some grids in the next few
weeks in South Dakota mainly DN94 and 95 with all the bands, I will be
watching the VHF tropo forecast and if the schedule works I will head there
with all bands thru 10 gigs.
Oh and to top it all off, lightning hit here at home and took out all the
phones, my neighbor lost almost every appliance he had in the house plus
other damage, so was an exciting weekend.

With all the bad weather I had more than the normal curious people stop and
wanted to see a real storm spotter in action! I just handed them one of the
pamphlets I carry along and explained to them what I was doing. Kind of fun
to see the looks on some peoples faces when they see you, I had one real
nice fellow in EN01 NE park his pickup an 1/8 mile down the road at the
intersection and run down just to see all the antennas (the road was 4 wheel
drive muddy).

All for now
73
Gene
N0DQS/r