[NLRS] January 2007 VHF SS @ W0JT

[John P. Toscano]

There were many plusses and minuses in this contest.  But after missing 
most of the January '06 contest, missing most of the June '06 contest 
(including missing all of the enhanced band conditions), missing all of 
the August '06 contest, suffering a mishap with my September '06 log, 
and missing half of the '06 10 GHz and Up Contest (daughter's wedding on 
the first weekend), I was happy to "get back into the saddle" and give 
this one a ride.

There was a scary moment 2 hours before "showtime" when my antenna 
rotator began to malfunction. The antennas refused to budge from their 
westerly direction, and the control box stubbornly read out as due 
south.  I had even started composing a note to the lists saying I'd have 
to work with just the omni antennas on 6M/2M SSB/CW plus 2M/135cm/70cm 
FM. I was sure that the rotator position potentiometer had failed, and 
my track record with climbing to the roof of my garage in the 
wintertime, where the rooftop tower is planted, is, shall we say, not 
sterling. One slide off the roof a few years ago is enough for me. 
Anyway, just before throwing in the towel and hitting the SEND button on 
the email, I stubbornly went over all the connections on the control 
cable that were accessible (basement shack to garage attic underneath 
the tower), and found the open circuit that had caused the problems. And 
in short order (pun intended), it was all working normally once again! 
(Whew! That was close!)

Conditions, as you doubtless know, were poor. My benchmark of how poor 
they were is that I normally can work KM0T with almost armchair copy on 
SSB on the lower 4 bands and with a bit of effort on 902 & 1296, whereas 
this year we could barely make it on 2M SSB and had to use CW for the 
other 3 "low" bands. I could (barely) hear his CW on 902 & 1296, but he 
couldn't hear (or "see") me on those two bands. Of course, Mike has a 
little more than my 10 watts on those bands, so this wasn't unexpected 
under the circumstances.

I missed the Es (or whatever it might have been) on 6M; I guess I was 
busy elsewhere on the bands at the time.  I stayed up (or tried to) all 
night, and the only reward there (in fact, the only QSO in the log 
between 0732 UTC and 1326 UTC) was a hard-earned 6M contact with N2PA in 
FN12 at 1102UTC.  I heard him in bits and pieces (short meteor burns?), 
managed to slip my call and grid in during one of the bursts, but 
couldn't complete the rest of the QSO until another burst about 5 
minutes later. Fortunately, he still remembered hearing me earlier, so 
we quickly completed the exchange before he faded out again.

Other highlights for me:
  - While I still haven't licked the problem of making my external keyer 
work with my FT-847 (50 and 432 MHz), IC-706MkII (144 and 222 MHz), and 
IC-251a (IF rig for 902 and 1296 MHz), I at least kludged together a way 
to rapidly switch the paddles between the two main radios (and used 
their internal keyers), and kept the straight key connected to the '251 
(which has no keyer, hence the poorer CW some of you heard there). This 
came in handy due to the poor conditions.  Once again, the number of my 
QSO's that relied on CW went up, as I became SLIGHTLY more skilled (or 
should I say, slightly less horrible) at using the mode. (Practice is 
what I desperately need, and the lack of free time is the obstacle to that.)

  - Made one 10 GHz contact with KC0IYT/r from his driveway to mine, 
late Saturday night. It was a bounce shot off of something rather than 
on the direct path. I had to point about 90 degrees to the east of the 
direct path. I guess it's easier for a 10 GHz signal to go around houses 
than through them. :)

-- Made two 10 GHz snow scatter contacts, with W0ZQ and W0GHz on Sunday 
morning. That was enormous fun for me. They were my first and only snow 
scatter contacts thus far. Though I've enjoyed considerable success on 
10 GHz as a rover in the last few 10G & Up contests, I never thought I'd 
work from my home down in the hollow, surrounded by trees, houses, and 
hills. My thanks to those guys for making it happen!

-- Made my first-ever contact on 2304 MHz, also with KC0IYT/r. Late last 
year I had finally fixed the PTT problem that had plagued me, but never 
got around to putting the antenna on my tower, nor completing the IF 
switchbox to put all the microwave bands on a common IF. So the antenna 
was hanging from the ceiling of my garage (I can point in any direction 
I want, as long as it's due North or due South), and I swapped cables 
between my tripod-mounted 10 GHz transverter system and the 2304 
transverter (which was sitting precariously on top of the yard waste 
barrel that I had dragged out to the driveway) to have a 2M IF. The 
reward came not from the length of the radio signal path, but from the 
number and duration of roadblocks that were finally overcome to get it 
on the air at all. Too bad I wasn't able to get the 3456 transverter on 
the air in at least a similar manner also. It still needs integration of 
an external amp to boost its 20mW signal, but more importantly, I 
haven't gotten around to attaching the 112 loops to either of the two 
booms on the loop yagis I bought for this band last year. (No, I don't 
plan to stack them, one is for home and one is for portable/roving 
operation.)

The only significant new equipment setback this time around was the 
apparent failure of my external PA on 432 MHz.  Fortunately, the 
barefoot FT-847 can put out 50 watts, and the amplifier only gives me 
100 watts out for 30 watts in, so it was only a modest loss. (I say 
apparent, because this morning, as I type this, it seems to be working 
normally once again.  Go figure.)

So here's the breakdown, subject to doing my own "LCR" before I dare to 
feed the Contest Robot:

              WØJT Entry Type: SINGLE-OP ALL LOW
============================================================
     Band      QSOs  Pts/QSO  QSO Pts  Mults      Best Dx
------------  ----  -------  -------  -----  ---------------
    50 MHz      38      1        38      10   1,298 Km FN12hn
   144 MHz      61      1        61      13     392 Km EN21dh
   222 MHz      14      2        28       5     304 Km EN13vc
   432 MHz      28      2        56       8     304 Km EN13vc
   902 MHz       7      4        28       2     160 Km EN25no
  1296 MHz       9      4        36       4     149 Km EN44eb
  2304 MHz       1      8         8       1      <1 Km EN34js
10368 MHz       3      8        24       1      27 Km EN34lx
------------  ----  -------  -------  -----  ---------------
Totals        161     n/a      279      44         n/a

W0JT CLAIMED SCORE:   12,276

Wow, 3 QSO's on 10G and one on 2304 added 32 QSO points and two grids, 
more QSO points than either 902 or 222, and close to the QSO points on 
50 MHz. Even more impressively, if not for those 4 QSO's and 2 grids, my 
score would have been only 10,374 or a loss of 1,902 points from the 
total. I guess it was well worth standing in my driveway and getting 
cold and wet to make those QSO's! In this contest, the high bands really 
pull their weight!

Thanks to all of you who played in the contest this weekend.

Remember to put your club name on your log before you send it in! The 
official list of acceptable club names can be found here:
   http://www.arrl.org/contests/club-list.html
Note that "NLRS" won't work, nor will "BC" or "CVVHFC", you have to 
spell it out as indicated in the above-referenced web page.

73 de W0JT