[NLRS] W9HQ in the UHF contest

[David Palm]

For the time that I was able to be in front of the radio, I enjoyed the
contest.  Conditions seemed quite down on Saturday afternoon, when I had
the most radio time.  They were way, way up on Sunday morning but I had
almost no time then to operate.

I thought I was only going to have 432, since I'm having some trouble with
my IF interface to the 222 transverter.  But then when I sat down in the
shack it occurred to me that I could cobble together enough cabling to
patch my Yaesu VX-6R with 1.5 watts out on 223 into my amplifier.  Sure
enough, I ran about 15 watts on that band into my homebrew 10-element quagi
and was able to make 3 contacts into 3 grids.  I made an additional 8
contacts on 432, into 7 unique grids.

Maybe it was the conditions, but I was surprised to make so few contacts in
the Twin Cities.  I CQed quite a bit in that direction and got -- just W0UC
early on, then I finally phoned W0GHZ just to talk to somebody else up
there.

It was great to get a text from AC0RA/R and coordinate with him on Saturday
afternoon into EN41.  He went from a shaky S1 on Saturday afternoon to a
booming S9+ on Sunday morning from the same place, so there was a lot of
enhancement. Thanks for roving, Wyatt!

I like the W0UC spotting page -- I hope that gets more and more use in
future contests.

I'm pushing forward to get the IF interface fixed and a 1296 loop yagi
built for the September contest, so hope to have 5 bands in play for that
one.

73,

David  W9HQ