Another VHF Contest into the books. As expected during September six meter activity was way down with any distance covered through meteor scatter. That did help a few with their FFMA pursuits. Here’s my story.
Overall Results
Ten grids activated including EM12 from the street in front of my house, which worked well at the end of the contest with COVID restrictions resulting in stops only for gasoline. That happened a couple of times with total distance traveled of 766 miles in 15 hours driving.
Eleven hours were spent in front of the rigs resulting in 155 QSOs — 105 on 50 MHz, 43 on 144 MHz, 1 on 222 MHz, 6 on 432 MHz. QSY was not happening via MSK or FT8, with only a few messages exchanged to make it happen. I worked 36 grids coupled with the 10 grids activated for a rough score of 7,452. There were only 2 contacts on SSB, 16 MSK contacts on 6 meters, the rest FT8. BTW – I skipped EM14 in my original plans.
In the past a focal point for the contests was in the Austin area. This time very few contacts in that direction. My impression is that stay-at-home restrictions led many hams in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to get on the air. Thank goodness as they filled my log from every grid I activated.
K5ND/R logs will be sent to Logbook of the World. But it takes me some time to sort them and upload for each grid. [Update, after much effort, LoTW is updated with all QSOs. N1MM works great during a contest but is a real challenge trying to upload Rover grids after the contest. I think I now have a process established that can work a bit better next contest.]
Highlights
MSK144 on six meters was a real eye-opener for me. I found no Es during my on-the-air time other than a few one and done sequences that quickly disappeared. Dave, KG5CCI, had worked me on MSK144 a week or so ago from home to put EM36 in my log. He was also very encouraging in making contacts during the contest for needed grids. See his Twitter post nearby on the four new grids I added to his log. Both of us running 100 watts into height challenged antennas.
Several MSK contacts on Saturday built my confidence in activating EM24 on Sunday morning. That resulted in giving out that somewhat rare grid to a few people including Lyle, N0LWF, for his FFMA grid 468.
The other highlight was Joel, W5ZN, in EM45 finding me wherever I happened to be mostly on 2 meters but also one each on six, 222, and 432. Ten total QSOs. Way to go Joel.
Special Night-Time Episode
On Saturday night by the time I got to EM11 it was dark. Not usually a big deal since its a roadside picnic area and the rover is all set to go. But for some reason 6 meters had a high SWR. That meant pulling out my step ladder, climbing on top of the car, and tweaking the coax connections for the balun. That worked.
But, in the process of all that, I opened most of the doors in the car and forgot to close the passenger front-side door. I couldn’t see it in the dark from my operating position in the backseat on the other side of the car. But what I did see were lots of bugs showing up — so many that I had trouble finding the mouse cursor on the large monitor!
I eventually discovered and closed that door. And then, on my drive home for the night, I opened up the windows and tried to blow out most of the bugs. That was reasonably successful.
However, about an hour into my drive north to home, I picked up what appeared to be a stick on the windshield — except that it was walking back and forth in front of me at eye-level. A closer look revealed a pretty good sized praying mantis. She kept that up for about an hour or so but was hiding somewhere when I got home at roughly 11 PM.
The next morning when I left home just after 4 AM heading north to EM24, there she was again walking back and forth on the windshield and sometimes perching on the driver-side visor. She kept me good company even though I got the feeling she was mocking my driving with the praying pose. No sign of her near sunrise in EM24 in Oklahoma.
General Travails
The life of a rover is usually beset with troubleshooting and making hopefully quick fixes as well as improvisation as needed. You caught the balun/connector issue earlier. I actually had a replacement in the car if I needed it — the sign of an experienced rover.
For the September Contest the travails began during setup — that’s where you take everything out of your shack and wedge it into the car. My TE Systems 6 meter amp, just back from repair, worked fine in the shack. However, plugging in the DC brought some form of toast to the unit. I was pretty bummed about that. But running barefoot seemed to work just fine.
At another point, I had the Winkeyer slide off the operating position, hit an external sound card resetting the card. All that happened during driving to the next grid. Once back in the operating position it took a while to figure out why the IC-9100 wasn’t working.
Worst of all the travails, I had a Windows update take effect on Sunday afternoon. Now I could have put it off, but I needed to restart the computer to recover from some sort of N1MM/WSJT-X snafu. I found no other way to restart the computer without activating the update. All that blew an hour on Sunday afternoon, Fortunately I didn’t miss much on the air activity with the dead bands.
Equipment Special Mention
This was the first contest that I added a West Mountain Radio N8XJK power booster along with the voltage monitor. It worked great powering the IC-910H. I also saw how much the car battery dropped on transmit. That #8 cable from the engine to the back of the car is just too long. That’s an improvement for the future.
The IC-910H and IC-9100 worked great. I ran two instances of WSJT-X within N1MM Logger. That helped me monitor 2 meters on the IC-910H and 6 meters on the IC-9100. I tried most times to run alternating CQs. But when not running a CQ on 2 meters I could easily pick up when another station came on the air.
The Directive Systems Rover Yagis and the Par Electronics Stressed Moxon continue to work great and hold up to the 75 mph winds as I travel from one grid to the next.
Thanks everyone for the QSOs. Delighted that I could add some grids to your logbooks.
Here’s the relevant charts from ContestOnlineScore.com. I didn’t consult it during the contest, but find the charts very helpful.
