[NLRS] KC9JTL/R preliminary results for VHF Sweepstakes

[David Palm]

Christopher (KC9JTL) and I had a great time roving to the EN42-52-43-53 grid
convergence by Dodgeville, WI.  We got a bit of a late start, but the
beautiful drive down there was shorter than I expected, so we arrived more
or less as planned, but initial set-up took a bit longer than planned so we
got on the air from EN42 about 5:15 pm.  I'll do a detailed write-up, with
photos, for my blog and ping the list.

2 meter FM was a total bust, unfortunately; we CQed all the way down and
beamed back toward the north but never heard a peep (except N9WU/R who heard
us right off.)  Feedline was hosed on 432, so we had to settle for QRP FM
into a short "cheap yagi" from EN42 until we could replace the feedline when
we stopped in EN52.  And my FT-897D was almost totally deaf on 6 meters--we
had at least half a dozen guys tell us that they could hear us just fine,
but we could either not hear them at all or just barely.  Still trying to
figure out whether that's a hardware problem or some software setting.  So
we left some 50 MHz Qs on the table.  The really pleasant surprise was 222,
on which we had just 1.5 watts from a Yaesu VX-6R into a 6 element WA5VJB
"cheap yagi".  As you can see below, we made as many Qs on 222 as we did on
432 with 20 watts into a 10 element yagi.  So that's a very inexpensive way
to get a real footprint on that band.

Despite the inevitable obstacles, we made 75 QSOs.  Headed back home much
too late, but Christopher kept me awake by filling me in on all sorts of
arcane Bionicle lore.

Here's our preliminary score (if I'm doing it correctly):

        QSOs        Multipliers
50     10                    10
144   39                    26
222   13                    13
432   13                    13

More details to come.  Thanks to all we contacted.

73,

David  W9HQ