[NLRS] W9HQ in the September 2015 ARRL VHF contest

[David Palm]

I scrambled to get new antennas up for 50 through 432 in time for this
contest and incredibly (for me) was able to have everything ready to go
more than an hour before the contest started.  That effort made Saturday a
little bit disappointing – I felt like I was all dressed up with nowhere to
go.  Activity levels were low and band conditions were horrible.  As K2DRH
commented, far from being any enhancement, it seemed like conditions were
negative.



Sunday afternoon/evening things really picked up and I ended up having a
great time overall.  Glad I reread the rules ahead of time, because I
lowered the drive to my 222 amp to stay within low power limits.  And I
seem to have lost my 144 MHz amplifier at some point, so I recabled to
bypass that on Sunday evening.  Otherwise, the equipment and antennas
worked great, including the homemade quagi on 222 MHz.


I’m afraid KC9VEM and KC9MRX didn’t get on much – we’re also scrambling to
get our 4H projects done for the county fair and KC9VEM took a tumble off
her horse at a 4H event Saturday morning (thankfully she’s alright), so she
wasn’t in a contest sort of humor.



As always, the rovers were great and really added pizzazz to the contest.  I
swept all four bands with Bruce and Janice in EN33, EN43, and EN44.  Got
all four with K0DAS/R in EN44, EN43, and EN53.  Also caught W9JK/R once in
EN51, WK7G/R in EN50 for two bands, and I got KC0P/R on all bands when he
was in EN33.  Thank you rovers!



I also caught some local guys on 2 meter FM and it’s an area I’m going to
try to exploit more in the next contest.  Seems like it might help plant
the seeds to get them into weak signal VHF.



Total was 118 QSOs, broken out as follows:



50:     29     10 grids

144:     47     15 grids

222:     20     11 grids

432:     22     10 grids



Looks like a total score of 7360, if I’m doing the math right.



Thanks again for all the contacts and 73.



David  W9HQ