[NLRS] September VHF contest and an experiment

[Bruce Richardson]

Duane,

What an excellent post!  Your good antenna swinging has caused you
to find me more often than just about anyone when I've been within
200+ miles of you.  Thanks for that--your system (of keeping your
rotor warm) works!

When you said clock-based, you might have meant the technique of
pointing south at 30 minutes after the hour, etc.  Yes, that won't
always work because everyone might be turning the same way.  But
concentrated "prime hours" to try and look harder outside the
75-mile radius towards area of known activity seems like a good
first effort to increase the east-west Q's (MN/WI/IL) that we've
all noted are surprisingly difficult and too few.  While the
difficulty will remain, I think making the effort should result in
more east-west Q's.  So, yes, in addition to encourageing all ops
to keep their rotors (almost) always moving, I think an initiative
towards a concentrated activity hour would be a good thing.  And
remember, no one should give up too easily. If you don't hear
anything right away, keep CQ'ing in that direction.

And I thought Jon's comment was good that rover's are not the
point of this new east-west initiative.  As many of you know, I've
done some June and Sept VHF and the last three UHF's all along the
90th parallel which I'd always hoped would let me be loud into MN,
WI, and IL.  Well, when I'm on the southern end of that run (near
Dodgeville), I'm pretty good into MKE and IL.  At the northern end
(near Wausau), I'm never as good into EAU or MN as I'd like to be.
Anyways, I'm starting to digress.  But the point I'd like to make
is that being on the 90th parallel and alternately pointing east
and west, I've worked the MKE and MN areas.  But I've not been
very successful at helping the two areas hook-up.  Please know
that if anybody hears those distant stations on the freq I'm on,
feel free to jump in and call them or let me know off the back
that you are hearing them and I will do what I can to help match
folks up.

My UHF travelogue should be ready within a couple of days.

Thanks again for your comments Duane. I think your message to keep
the rotor warm is a good one.

73
Bruce Richardson W9FZ