[NLRS] KC9JTL-R in June ARRL VHF contest

[David Palm]

After a rocky start, this contest definitely turned around and became a lot
of fun.

We were scrambling past our scheduled departure time to pull equipment
together, so arrived late for our desired start on Granddad's Bluff
overlooking La Crosse.  I'm grateful for the local hams that were monitoring
and gave us contacts.  Don't know if we missed any due to tardiness.

Anyway, as Bill Davis said, the major opening on 6 meters was almost the
Grinch that stole Christmas for a rover station like ours.  Yes, we had 6
meters and yes we could even operate while mobile.  But we were seriously
outgunned, with only 100 watts into a coax dipole up maybe 8 feet.  So we
only made a few QSOs on the drive up to the EN44-EN45-EN54-EN55 grid
convergence.  And when we got to EN55, 6 was still banging away and 2 was
dead.  We got a small flurry from the guys in EN44 and we thought, Okay here
we go, but then silence again.  We tried for more Qs on 6 with little
success and even tried calling CQ and announcing that we were in the "rare"
EN55.  Nothing.  This was getting discouraging.  Man, I thought, if this
stays like this tomorrow it will be a total bust.

Then came Santa Claus, or at least one of his helpers, K2YAZ over in EN74.
He caught us just after we moved over to EN45.  Worked him on 144, 222, 432
(but not 6 meters, because I forgot to throw the IF switch back to 6 meters
after we were done on 222.  Doh!).  Then I got the idea of just moving to
the other three grids and working him from there.  He was a great sport and
we did indeed catch him on those three bands in EN44, EN54, and EN55.  Thank
you so much Bob!  You really saved the day.  Finally, feeling much better
about the whole thing, we headed for Wausau where we sacked out about 11 pm.

Sunday morning we assisted at the early Mass at St. Mary's Oratory in Wausau
(www.institute-christ-king.org/*wausau*/), caught a bite of breakfast, and
then fortified in body and soul headed back out to do battle.  We listened
on 6 meters and heard nothing, so we decided that instead of driving south
immediately per our plan we would go back out to the grid convergence and
try again.  So glad we did.  It was much, much better now, with a number of
stations finally listening on 2 meters.  So in the end we worked KC9BQA,
W9GA, W0UC, N8LIQ, K9UHF, and several others as we worked our way back
through the grids.  Now that's more like it!  We then headed south where we
set up in EN53 to work some 6 meter e-skip and some "locals", then to EN44
where we worked a few more, then finally back to EN43 for the last 45
minutes of the contest.  Whew!

Equipment-wise it was a scramble to pull it all together, but basically the
station worked very well.  I built a power distribution box with heavy fused
cables coming from the engine compartment and PowerPoles out from there that
worked like a champ.  We had a rotor for the antennas that was a huge
improvement over the "armstrong" rotor we used last time.  And we had a 4
element beam on 2 meters, 6 element "cheap yagi" on 222, 11 element "cheap
yagi" on 432, and a shortened coax dipole inside PVC on 6 meters.  All
antennas seemed to work pretty well.  I had an initial glitch on 432 from
Granddad's Bluff--W9RPM couldn't hear me and since I could have hit him with
a rock I knew I had a problem on that band.  Turns out I had a bad
connection to the amplifier and, to top it off, the amplifier wasn't
working.  Nice to catch it early.  So we were barefoot on that band.  But it
didn't seem to matter much.  After that, all equipment worked as it should.

I'll have a few more details and some pictures up on my blog later this
week.

Here's where I think we're at score-wise:

          QSOs   Mults
50      41          32

144    64          39

222    25          21

432    24          19

If I'm doing the math right, that looks like about 22533 points, which is
our best contest by far.

Thanks to all who worked us and 73,

David  W9HQ