[NLRS] KC9JTL in the ARRL Jan 2011 VHF Sweepstakes

[David Palm]

The contest for us was plagued by equipment trouble, antenna trouble, and
lack of operating time due to other family responsibilities.  Still, we had
a good time and that's the name of the game.

For starters, as I mentioned my IC-746 was dead the day before the 'test.
When I first checked voltage at the rig end of the power cable I got full
voltage, so I thought it must be more serious than that.  Long story short,
I checked it again and it was 7, then 9, then 13.8, then back to 7 so there
was something wrong.  Visually inspected the fuses and they didn't look
blown but pulled them out and the end cap came off of one of them.  Replaced
that and everything was fine.

Then when we started operating, our 6 meter antenna had very high SWR.
Don't know what is wrong, but we left a lot of 6 meter QSOs on the table.

Then the rotor was really flaky in the cold, so we never really knew where
we were pointing.  But that led to what for me was the real highlight of the
contest, namely, that we spent a lot of our 2 meter time using the 144 MHz
halo that I built per KR1ST's design (see it here
http://www.kr1st.com/2mhalo.htm).  It worked really well--we heard people
and people heard us, so we made most of our 2 meter Q's off of that
antenna.  The beam was just too frustrating.

We made only a few Q's on 222, with the VX-2R running one watt into a six
element WA5VJB "cheap yagi".  And we made a few with our pitiful 7 element
yagi on 432 MHz.  Man, I really need to get serious this year about some
better antennas!

Still, as I said, we had a good time.  One real highlight was hearing so
many local stations on, including some, such as KC9PXZ, K9WKW, W9GM I had
not heard on the air during a VHF contest before.

Here's the final low-down, if I've done the math right:


QSOs Unique Grids  QSOs on 50: 8 4


 QSOs on 144: 38 15


 QSOs on 222: 4 3


 QSOs on 432: 11 4



61 32
So I think that makes for 2432 points.

Thanks to all for the contacts!

73,

David  W9HQ and Christopher KC9JTL