[TVARC] ARRL June VHF K2PS SO 3Band LP

[K2PS Pete Stafford]

I'd say it was a pretty good contest, despite the horrid conditions on
Saturday.  At least we had FT8, although that's a slog.  I had about 90 QSOs
that first day, which started at 2P, with even a handful of Europeans early,
but it wasn't a whole lot of fun.  Was thinking that all the effort that
went into putting up the 5-element 6M yagi was hardly worthwhile.  Sunday
started slowly too, with only 20 more between 630 and 930a.  That included
my first QSOs using MSK144.  MSK144 is one of those "other" modes within
WSJT-X.  It was designed for meteor scatter QSOs, and repeats the exchange
over and over within the 15 second time slot.  The obvious difference is
that you can see, in real time, what is being sent instead of being blind
during the receive cycle.

But all of a sudden the band opened at about 930a (local) and SSB and CW
were the places to be.  And, except for a lull early afternoon, the callers
kept coming.  Had a single hour with 109 QSOs, and the best ten minutes had
a rate of 168/hour.  Surprisingly many stations on CW.  Back a few years,
SSB was pretty much the only game in town.  There were just a few stations
exclusively on CW (we could work a station once per band, irrespective of
mode).  Stations were mostly from New England and Mid-Atlantic regions, with
a few in the Midwest.  The band only opened to the west in the last hour or
so, but I could then add a few multipliers (each grid square is a
multiplier).

The station worked well, with one exception:  in the latter part of the
contest, I noticed that, when logging an SSB QSO, the computer (running
N1MM+) took an inordinate amount of time to store the contact and come back
to allow me to enter the next caller.  So I had to remember what his
callsign was, and then enter it while I was trying to give him my report.  I
almost hoped that no one would call me so that I could catch up, and that's
not what you want to be thinking.  Curiously, the same problem did not exist
when I ran them on CW.  I tried rebooting the radio (Icom-7610), rebooting
the Windows 10 PC, closing some of the many N1MM+ windows, to no avail.  I'm
open to suggestions any of you may have.

73, Pete, K2PS

                    ARRL June VHF Contest - 2020

Call: K2PS
Operator(s): K2PS
Station: K2PS

Class: SO 3Band LP
QTH: FL
Operating Time (hrs): 20

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
    6:  569   118
    2:    7     3
  222:           
  432:           
  903:           
  1.2:           
  2.3:           
  3.4:           
  5.7:           
  10G:           
  24G:           
-------------------
Total:  576   121  Total Score = 69,696

Club: The Villages Amateur Radio Club

Comments:




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