[NLRS] W0NE UHF Contest results

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

Much better than the year I made one q in one grid and that station 
didn't get it in his log, so they docked me two contacts giving me a 
published score of -1. After I asked about it they scratched me from the 
report completely. I'm going to have to have a really good UHF station 
to participate again.

73, Jerry, K0CQ

On 8/5/2013 10:21 PM, kf0q at hbci.com wrote:
>
>
> 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)
>
>
>
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