[NLRS] 2006 SBMS 2.3 GHz & Up Contest NLRS Summary

[W0ZQ at aol.com]

Last year the NLRS scored 28,485 points with 10 entries.   This  year we 
scored 28,564 points from 13 entries, a very slight  improvement.   You may recall 
that Saturday was committed to  Aurora'06 and that Sunday it was rain, rain, 
rain, wind, wind,  wind.    The wind was so strong on Sunday that many of us 
found  over 3 KHz of Doppler shift on 10 gigs .... so much that it was beyond 
my rigs  RIT range and I had to go to split transmit/receive VFOs on my IF rig 
once I  figured out what was going on.   Pretty wild.   Many of us  that did 
venture out are just now finally warming up again and getting all the  water 
out of our equipment.     

Here are some  statistics:
Total number of QSOs made by club members =  137
Number of QSOs made by band:
2304 = 11, best DX 81 km
3456 = 7, best DX 81 km
5760  = 14, best DX 309 km
10 gig = 99,  best DX 309 km
24 gig = 6, best DX  2 km
Total number of points from unique's =    8,700
Total number of points from distance = 19,864

Our best DX was from the band of rovers in EN34NL to Mike, KM0T in EN13vc,  
at 309 km.  As I recall, all 10 GHz contacts were SSB.   I  enjoyed making a 
number of contacts with Mike over the same path on 5.7 using my  2 watts and 
small dish that most of you saw at Au'06.  Bill, K0AWU  (EN37ed) and I (EN34nl) 
had a nice 302 km rain scatter contact as well.  
 
One of these years this event is not going to fall on Aurora weekend and we  
will have decent (??) weather, and when that happens, we should be able to  
generate a really big score !   However, given all the events around  this 
weekend including the wet & windy weather, I'm pretty happy as to where  we ended 
up.
 
73, Jon
W0ZQ


Come and join us here in Bloomington, Minnesota, home of  the Mall of 
America, July 27 & 28, 2006 for the 40th annual Central States  VHF Society 
Conference hosted once again by the NLRS.