[NLRS] Sept VHF report from EN37

[Bill Davis]

  If you grow weary of reading and only want the facts, skip to below the dotted line toward the end of the page.

  1pm and I hear Paul W0UC on 2m, work him (not real strong, but expect he is looking elsewhere.) He requests a delay on the other bands. In the first hour I also work WA0FAA, W0JT (3bands) , KA0RYT, K0SIX (3bands). A good start. In fact, that was about as good as it got.

  Conditions seemed poor here for most of the contest period. The rain system that slowly moved through the area Sat afternoon, I'm sure didn't help the propagation. 

  The workable station count seemed really low. I don't ever recall hearing only one side of a QSO on band after band and QSO after QSO to this extent. Beyond 200miles seemed to be problematic.

  The "Northern contingent" (N0KKT, WB0TDV, KB0CIM, K0MVJ, NT0V, W0PHD, W6GMT and VE3KRP) accounted for 27% of my QSOs. Thanks guys for being there. These stations from the "North Country" have a special meaning to me. They do it for the FUN and to HELP OTHERS, not the numbers. GREAT to see KB0CIM and WB0TDV on again, I hate having contests without working my own grid.

  Eight stations (NT0V, KB0CIM, W0GHZ, W0UC, K2DRH, N9ISN, N0AKC, and W0JT) each were worked on 4 bands or more accounted for 54.4% of my QSOs!

  Lots of EN44 activity :-) Big time fun to have N9ISN in the 222 log again. "Welcome back, Al!"


  Only 3 rover contacts were in the log! I worked every rover I heard except for hearing KC0IYT/R once briefly and never again. No heard response to many calls on rovers frequencies.

  Workable stations were in short supply. I heard W0ZQ doing a QSY once and never heard him again.

  I lost my 10GHz tower preamp, so no 10GHz QSOs .. I was heard, but the preamp is a BIG attenuatorat this time. I hope to have that resolved for next weekend.


  The lack of 144.200 for a "Calling frequency" made it a doubly difficult contest. I can't understand why this is not appreciated and honored!  There was no single frequency that could be monitored for a condition check or to coordinate a QSY and run of bands. This forces ALL of us to a "search and pounce" mode of operation which is VERY TIME intensive and prevents a station that just wants to operate for a brief period to "help others", of having much of an opportunity to do so. This does NOT encourage joining in fun.


  PLEASE CONSIDER:: This loss of the calling frequency is NOT NEW. Why don't we as a group consider a SINGLE SECONDARY "calling frequency"? When this is an issue, we could monitor and coordinate on this second freq, instead of all the 5kc -10kc steps having to be considered? Perhaps this second freq could be "talked up" at AU2014 and included in the contest spreadsheet. For it to work it needs to be UNDERSTOOD and used. This was a MAJOR factor here... monitoring 200 was a total waste of time in this contest, because of the limited number of stations that could use it, especially when it was not being used properly. REACTIONs appreciated privately or in NLRS post.

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 For this contest, it was my LOWEST Sept contest total since 2001 and by a BUNCH! Discouraging to say the least. Much of it is activity related.

Band    QSOs    Grids    Points

 6m      18      11       900

 2m      30      18      1500 

222      10       7      1000 

432      14       9      1400

902       3       2       450

1296      3       3       450  

Totals   78      50      5700

  Respectfully posted  Bill  K0AWU  EN37ed