Best contact: 355 miles @ 2304mhz
Contest length: 33 hours
Sleep: 8 hours
Drive time: 14 hours (during contest hours only)
Setup time total: 2hours (10 minutes each up or down)
Bathroom/food/gas breaks are in the drive time.
Operating time: 9 hours total at 6 sites =
Average time per site: 1.5hrs
QSO per hour avg = 6
qso/hr
Major Contributors:
25 QSO’s W2SZ/1 (mostly just microwave but they want me to
do low bands sometimes too)
14 QSO’s N2PA I missed three contacts due to site location
problems (FN11)
15 misc call signs
24 Microwave QSO’s
30 Low bands QSO’s
Hi all, I am now getting the idea that conditions were not to great overall. Sunday being worse. I think I can verify this from my locations. My 355 mile contact Saturday on 2ghz was better than the 225 mile contact Sunday with the same station. I did not work EN92 due do almost golf ball size hail and lightening. I turned off all of my radios as I could see the lightening hit the next row of hills to the east from me. I lost my 3ghz transverter and I also lost my brand new ICOM 706 MKIIG during this contest. I had high hopes of a 50mhz opening. I never could tell, I had no 50,144 or 432mhz all day Sunday! What a bummer. My old ICOM 706 MKII was a workhorse and never had a hiccup! This one died two days after being installed. I had high winds at all sites except EN91 (right before the storm) and FN11 was very nice! A farmer at fn02 asked me not to park on the side of the road. He would prefer if I parked on the hill in his farm field. I will oblige next time. I had a new MAST mount for the bottom of my main dish mast. This made it possible for me to be up and running at all the windy sites. If I had not made this change I would have not have activated 3 more grids. I have a picture of my Orange flag showing it horizontal with all the wind! My Sunday activities were just not to great and I only had 222mhz on the low bands. Fortunately some of the big gun stations also have healthy 222mhz so I was able to continue with my favorite part of this contest, the microwaves. I now have the feeling I can do 355 miles on 2304 doing most contests as long has conditions are average. As you can see I looked at my time usage. I found that my drive time is crazy. If I want to make more contacts I MUST reduce the contest time driving. I need FN02, FN01 and FN00 WEST sites, anyone know of any? FN02, FN11 and even FN01 seem to be desirable sites for many contest stations. If I want to spend more time doing stuff other than the Microwaves I will need less driving. I want to spend more time on the low bands giving out points. I don’t need them, I am addicted to Microwave distances but I know people want more rover points. If I did not loose my ICOM I would have had a lot more low band contacts Sunday. As it was I did 6 more contacts on low bands than Microwaves and I could have done more. I missed some contacts with N2PA because of a site access problem and I also was hopeing to work N2PA from EN92 since it has a nice path profile to N2PA from there but the Lightening cut that off at the knees. Sorry guys. I missed all of my low band scheds. Saturday I did not hear any of you on 144.260 and calls on your freq’s did not find you. On Sunday I was unable to make any contacts with out my ICOM.
2004 goal 400 miles on 3456 and maybe 5760!
I also want to improve my Microwave captivity by doing more low bands for those I need of some of my grids that are nt active on microwaves.
By the way guys, a pair of looper beams on 2ghz is not as good as a 6 foot dish! There is a lot of DB’s difference! I run 30 to 40 watts on 2 and 3ghz AND I run a 6 foot dish that has around 33db of GAIN! That’s a ERP of 30,000 to80,000 watts respectively! I have a pair of 3456 amps that should give me twice that power next year! I need more serious microwave stations to work me! So far the only stations I find workable have been K8GP, W2SZ and N2PA. So you might say I am captive to these big gun’s but “MY BAG” is microwave distance. Some of you go for scores, some collect grid’s, others just collect QSL cards. I am a Microwave distance addict! Anyone else out there like me?
If you want to know more about my equipment and see some pictures come visit my site. Pictures from this contest will not be up until this weekend due to work obligations.
http://www.lmrgroup.com/ke3ht/rover