[NLRS] August UHF Contest -- EN37ed

[Bill Davis]

  It seems like we are often unhappy with the propagation during contests and that was again a real problem. NOT imagined for sure. Very few times did things even seem normal. One exception will be contained below.

  Our company were off in town at the start of the contest, so I was hopeful in getting a good start to a fun contest. The start was VERY slow. 30min before even the first signal was heard. At the end of the first hour, 4 QSOs were in the log, a 3 band run with Paul W0UC included. 

  A bit after 5pm I heard my first rover, W0ZQ. Jon was the only rover worked in the entire contest. Worked Jon from EN33 on Saturday and EN35, EN25 on Sunday. He was 13 of my 35 QSOs. I was VERY excited to work him twice on 10Ghz, once from EN33 and the real shocker EN35. Jon's location in EN35 yielded a bearing of 188.6deg. In that direction tall trees in the neighbors yard and beyond as well as hills right away.2.5 miles away the hills are over 150ft higher than the dish PLUS trees on those hills. Jon was willing to try and I will never turn down a 10GHz try. With 4.4deg elevation cranked in, Jon was visible on the panadapter and his signal could be heard just above the noise maybe 60% of the time. The signal contained considerable scattering as the trace was "fuzzy" and not a nice clean trace like  902 or 1296. With a few repeats me made it! I have NEVER worked a 10GHz tropo signal over that path. VERY VERY COOL. Most unprobable.


  Jon and I had help with airplane scatter on 902 from 2 grids as well. Talk about airplane scatter... Barry VE4MA and I were only able to complete on one band, 432. After an "ok" QSO on 432 CW while signing his signal jumped in strength with a bit of Doppler.. A quick exchange then on SSB before the "birdie" flew away.

  Never heard another rover except for a brief "tropo bubble" from Carol N0HZO, repeated calls yielded zip.


  A real lack of "northern stations" in the log. Looked and called many times for Wally W0PHD and nothing. Did work Dennis NT0V on 222 and 432, but signals were poor. Ran with Eddie VE3KRP on 222 and 432 and not a trace. "Eddie looked out the window to be sure the tower was standing". ARGH 


  Fun to get David NI0W EN25 down by St Cloud in the log on 432. THANKS David for our first QSO. John W0JT was worked on 222 and 432 :-) Remember the poor conditions... go figure, Chris N0JCF got on Sunday about noon. Chris had an outstanding signal, S6-7 on 222 and 432 and easy SSB copy on 902 and 1296. COOL! Chris lives about 2.8miles east of the AU conference location not far from south shore of White Bear Lake. THANKS Chris.


  Paul W0UC did some tuning on his 902 cavity and we were able to work again on 902. Cellular interference has been a real problem for us for some time on 902.

  In the end ... the results were in the middle of the range of scores for the AUG contest here. 7th position out of 13 AUG UHF entries in the spread sheet.

   Band     Qs  Grids

    222 -- 10     7
    432 -- 12     8
    902 --  6     5
   1296 --  5     4
  10GHz --  2     2
-------------------------
           35     26   

Points:  4,056

73  Bill  K0AWU