ARRL September VHF Contest - 2023
Call: K1TEO
Operator(s): K1TEO
Station: K1TEO
Class: Single Op-All Modes HP
QTH: FN31/CT
Operating Time (hrs): 20.5
OpMode: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 276 86
2: 198 50
222: 77 37
432: 110 40
903: 31 21
1.2: 43 25
2.3: 17 13
3.4:
5.7: 5 5
10G: 3 2
24G:
-------------------
Total: 760 279 Total Score = 326,430
Club: Mt Airy VHF Radio Club
Comments:
After 2 extended tropo openings in the weeks before the contest, I guess we used
up all the good prop. Condx were flat except for some weak ES (workable on FT8)
both Saturday and Sunday AM. Saturday was to the MW and SE, while Sunday AM
mostly to the MW. Sunday evening there was a stronger opening to the upper MW.
With Stronger sigs (+) I tried on SSB. I did work Matt, KA0PQW in EN33 who was
59, but numerous CQs went unanswered. Anyway, about 30 of my 6M grids were on Es
which is a nice surprise in Sept.
Murphy came to CT this time around. My 3G set up went up on the tower a few days
before the contest and was working well. Then a couple of days before the
contest the amp had a short. It's on the tower so not something I had time to
fix before the contest.
We had numerous T-storms Saturday close by but they luckily never came on top of
me. Sunday they came straight at me with lots of rain and lightning. Starting
late morning until mid-afternoon I was mostly off the air. I think I connected
and disconnected my ant's 12 times during the contest (a couple of times
Saturday with nearby storms). It got pretty tiresome. Sunday the rain static was
over s9 on 2M for many hours making the band unusable even when I was hooked up)
. Then the 432 antenna developed an swr - not too bad with 20 watts returned and
500w going forward. But my new solid-state amp didn't like that, and I had to
switch to my RIW amp which handles the swr fine. But somewhere with all the
changes and disconnecting I shorted a wire to my 12v supply which stopped
working. Was hoping it was just a blown fuse but was not the case. So had to
move everything over to another 12v supply which took more time. With rain
coming down in buckets I thought about stopping but kept going and did enjoy the
rest of the contest.
Score is down from last year, mainly for a much lower score on 2M and fewer
rovers out there which cut down microwave contacts. Heck I didn't even work my
own grid on most of the microwaves. Many other normally reliable grids were MIA
as well.
Since it continues to be a hot topic, I'll report that my 2M Q's were 50/50
ssb/cw vs FT8/MSK 144. 6M was 30/70 and at least 90% of my 432 and 222 Q's were
cw/ssb. All of my microwave Q's were ssb/cw as well.
I did manage 2 new grids in the contest. FF32 on 6 (Chile) and FN01 on 5.7G.
Tnx for the Q's and to the ARRL for sponsoring.
Jeff K1TEO
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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