[NLRS] N9ISN June VHF Results

[Allan W Schlaugat]

I am still in awe over the results of this contest for me. Bill K0AWU said
it best in his roundup for the contest.. 'this will be a lifetime high
contest score'. All I know is it will be almost impossible to beat it
unless I take over the W0AIH/W0UC contest station like Justin does with
K9MU.
Saturday right from the start at 1800z  found 6 meters hot and heavy into
the SE US. I was able to find and hold a run frequency around .233 for
almost 4 hours right off the bat. My mistake during the opening was moving
the beam west when WA9PDC called in during the pileup. I did pick off
several far west CN and DN grids but at a cost of 40-50 more Q's to the
east. I found the front end receive on the Yaesu FT-847 to fold up under
the huge signals all across the band. Tuning across the band found all the
signals to be a huge morass of garbage. A 3 khz roofing filter or even a
2.4 khz 2nd IF filter would of done wonders here. QRM was horrendous but I
slogged through the 10-15 station pileups the best I could. Best surprise
was having FY1FL in GJ35 call me during the heat of the pileups.
The opening then moved up to the east coast and NE US about 1930z. This is
when things got very interesting. The skip was shortening dramatically into
the EM79/EM69/EN80/EN81 areas. I knew 2 meters was opening up east but I
stayed on 6m with my 100+Q's/hr runs. This was another mistake on my part
as I could of picked off some great multis if I would of gone to 2 meters.
Towards 2300z the pileups were getting smaller and the skip was also
getting short again. Stations were also rolling in from TX and MO. The
rates dropped dramatically but I still stuck with it until almost 0300z
exclusively on 6m all day. Around 0400z I ran with the locals here in EN44
and cleaned up all the bands to finish up a very historic day.

Sunday opened up with no widespread 6m openings. With church and Sunday
brunch obligations out of the way I hit the VHF bands hard by noon. 6m was
very sporadic with openings exclusively to the SW and western US. This was
a 'normal' VHF contest now pulling out weak 6m signals from Arizona and New
Mexico and running 4 bands with as many of the locals as I could find.
Items of note here were the rovers were huge in keeping the interest and
activity up. N9UX, W0ZQ, K9ILT, KF0Q and KB9PJL with others I can't
remember off the top of my head really kept the rotor on the tower warm.
Thanks a ton!!!! Got some very tough stations I managed to work in CN73,
CM87 and DM12. Some XE2's made the log here too.

I was very pleased I was able to get on for this one. After the tornado
damage to my tower and mast pipe a year ago, Len N9QIP and Skywave Tower
managed to get everything fixed up and running great 3 days before the
contest. If that would not of happened, I would of been a very unhappy
panda hearing about this once in a lifetime opening on 6m and 2m.
The only glitch was my 220 Mhz setup. I was concerned over that going into
the contest as it isn't putting out any power (1 watt tops) so for
September I'll get that checked out and working. It was good enough for the
local contacts though.

My score almost tripled my all time high score for June I set back in 1996.
I am thrilled to death over this once in a lifetime experience. Is there
any chance I can have two lifetimes?

The preliminary score:

                  ARRL VHF QSO PARTY -- 2006


      Call:      N9ISN
      Category:  Single Operator
      Power:     Low Power 
      Band:      All Band
      Mode:      Mixed Mode 
      State:     WI

      BAND     QSO    QSO PTS      GRIDS


       50      777      777         173
      144       55       55          21
      222        8       16           3
      432       37       74          16
     -----------------------------------

     Totals    877      922         213  =   196,386

Club Affiliation: Chippewa valley VHF contesters

See you all at Central States!!!

73   Al    N9ISN
-- 
Allan W. Schlaugat      Chippewa County (WI) District 6 Supervisor
Amateur Radio: N9ISN           American Philatelic Society #186089
Home Page: www.n9isn.com                      Albertville, WI  USA

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