[NLRS] W0NE UHF Contest results

[kf0q at hbci.com]

It seems hard to believe but I have not participated in this event  
since 2006.  Based on a few visits from Murphy and some less than  
ideal conditions I could write two different accounts of our operation  
for the this years UHF contest.  Rather than go into the negative side  
of the event I will share some mostly positive comments.

To start out with a few members of our club have always been curious  
about the high bands and have been prodding me to set up a club  
station for the UHF test as things tend to slow down a bit this time  
of year and the wx can be conducive to outdoor operations.  So we put  
together a Field Day style operation using the Winona County Sheriffs  
trailer as a portable shack complete with a kitchen and air  
conditioning; clearly we could have done much worse for the  
accommodations of a setup.

As for the contest we were running at bit behind at the contest start  
as usual for me and the only bands going at the start were 222 432 5.7  
and 10G. This caused some excitement immediately when two of the rover  
stations in our area were ready to run some bands. There was a mad  
scramble at that point to get the rest of the station going which only  
took a few minutes.

After hearing the weather forecast of a beautiful day with low  
humidity I thought that the tropo would be minimal at best but we were  
committed to give it a shot hoping the rover activity would help.   
While the location seemed to have many positive attributes we failed  
to do an RFI assessment prior to the contest.  This error haunted us  
for most of the contest with a solid S9 pulsing noise on 222 and 432.   
I could only guess that there was some utility gear such as a pole  
mounted transformer or defective insulator nearby that was causing the  
interference. Late at night the noise left but did return a few hours  
after sunrise on Sunday.

All equipment was connected and tested at my place prior to reassembly  
at the site.  In spite of that we had some troubles show up during  
setup and later in the contest including a bad IF cable on 1296 bad  
power cable on the 222 transverter and suspect N connector on the  
hardline for 902.

On a positive note it never ceases to amaze me how good the older Down  
East equipment is.  After sitting in my ham shack for all these years  
with seldom use everything worked well.  I was very pleased with the  
10G station although it would have been nice to work some 5.7.

Taken from all of our groups experience with HF contesting lately we  
ran N1MM logging software on a network with multiple rig control and  
transceiver offset frequencies for all of the transverters bands  
through 10Ghz.  For the most part this worked very well but did  
require a bit more attention at the start of the contest or reboot.

I ran the bands with a couple of stations early Sunday morning but no  
sweep due to the 902 cable issue.  Later replaced the cable but was  
not able to locate any of the station for a follow up qso attempt.  
After the couple of successful runs Sunday morning the rest of the  
time was pretty much spent calling cq on cw and sometimes ssb with  
little or no response.  I can remember this part of the contest from  
years before.

Nice to work the rovers on Saturday W0ZQ/R, KC0P/R and N0HZO/R  
although no rover contacts were made on Sunday.

While I find our score somewhat embarrassing it is a starting point  
for our group most of which has never touched a transverter.  The  
noise problem combined with not being able to hook up with any rovers  
to the south was unfortunate to say the least.

As a club activity the contest at least provided some new and  
interesting operating techniques and equipment for several folks that  
have never seen anything like this.  In spite of the low score we had  
a great time putting the station together and getting things working  
on a beautiful day.

Summary:
  Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   222:  16      8
   432:  18      7
   903:   4      4
   1.2:   6      5
   2.3:   5      5
   3.4:   4      4
   5.7:   0
   10G:   4      3
   24G:
-------------------
Total:  57     36  Total Score = 11,448


73,

Matt - KF0Q (W0NE EN43ex)