| "Having more fun with greater frequency." |
Moxon Rectangle fixed south
3-el yagi fixed ENE
Anyone who has been operating the spring 6m sprint for at least the last decade knows that today's event was the best one of
them all. The band finally opened in the first half of May instead of waiting until the second half when there are
no contests. Maybe the experts were right when they predicted the May/June 2013 timeframe for
the peak of Cycle 24. For the past several years, the first half of May has been too late to get in on the March/April TEP,
and too early to catch the start of the sporadic-E season. This year was different, with sporadic-E showing up on May 2nd,
and some North American stations working TEP paths in excess of 6,000 miles (10,000 km) to Argentina on
May 4th (and more
TEP showing up the day before the sprint).
At first the sprint was off to a slower start than some 2m sprints I've seen in the northeast US:
RADIO EQUIPMENT
Icom IC-7600 at 100 watts
DESCRIPTION
The 6 meter spring sprint was sponsored by the
Central States VHF Society and personal contributions of K9JK. The rules and more info were
provided at the
spring sprints website. Every year
this single-band contest runs from 2300Z on a Saturday until 0300Z Sunday, and this time it was held on May 11-12, 2013.
1) no answers to my CQ in the first 15 minutes
2) working only 2 stations in the next 25 minutes
Both of these were local stations worked on troposcatter: KC2SFU / hilltop portable FN22gk and AC2BL FN23ta (who would end up
being the only station for which I used the 3-el yagi fixed ENE). With conventional
scoring, those two grids would have been good multipliers to have, as they are a bit rare. But with distance scoring, grids
do not multiply your score. Instead, each kilometer is one point, making close contacts less beneficial. Then at 2340Z while
I was calling CQ, W4IMD jumped in there with his band-opening signal from EM84, and within the same minute a station from
FM15cx answered me, and that was a much shorter distance of only 470 miles, indicating that not only was the band starting to
open, but the intensity would be high (shorter skip distances indicate stronger E-layer ionization). That contact would end
up being the 3rd shortest path of this contest. Then the band opened
solidly, and for the rest of the sprint it was a steady supply of working stations to the S, SW, and W, as well as trying to
find a quiet frequency at least 3 KHz away from the next guy clobbering my receive (even with filtering activated and the IF
passband shifted). After starting on 50.157 I moved up the band
several times, and ended up operating on 50.230 for the last part of the sprint. The contacts came in at a rate of one every
3 minutes averaged over the entire sprint. Not too bad for having no E-skip available in the easterly directions and hearing
nothing from the north. Working half of the VUCC award in less than 4 hours was a lot of fun, especially
for a guy with no tower, no rotors, no amplifiers, no preamps, no CW contacts, and all antennas at one wavelength above
ground or less. It was an even bigger thrill to be the first 6m contact for South Carolina station K4RNV EM94ax. The first 6m
Sprint that I can remember participating in was the fall 6m Sprint of 2001; the spring 6m Sprint of 2013 now stands as my
highest QSO count in all those years in any spring or fall version of this event. For at least the 2nd consecutive year, the
Solar Flux Index was higher than the previous year: 136 versus last year's 130, and 92 the previous year. Note: Three days
after the sprint there were three X-class solar flares (the highest classification) in one day.
POINTS SUMMARY
BAND QSOs GRIDS OLD-STYLE TOTAL AVG DISTANCE
SCORE DIST (km) PER QSO (km)
---------------------------------------------------------
50 79 50 3,950 91,697 1,161
LOCAL CALLSIGN GRID DISTANCE (km) ----------------------------------------------------- 1918 KC2SFU FN22gk 27.7 1933 AC2BL FN23ta 118.5 1940 W4IMD EM84ab 1190.0 1940 W4FRA FM15cx 757.1 1945 K4YMQ EM63um 1368.6 1947 N4MIC EM74rl 1184.6 1959 W4GA EM74qc 1222.3 2000 KI4ECU EM97bc 806.6 2004 KZ9A EM59in 1188.8 2010 AA4DD EM86un 876.8 2011 AK4QR EM64nt 1298.5 2011 W4BCU EM86um 880.5 2022 K4YKZ EM85rh 1002.3 2028 N4PN EM82dv 1286.3 2031 W4GCB EM73ka 1346.8 2033 W4ABC EL87pt 1758.9 2033 K9NW EM79rj 823.6 2034 WA4III EM64iu 1322.4 2035 N8XA EM79 853.2 2044 KD4OLC EL98 1635.9 2049 K0OWG EM47ss 1363.5 2051 N2MKO FN12vo 41.0 2056 KI4OYF EM67 1116.4 2103 N4QS EM57qb 1263.3 2104 KZ4RR EM90fe 1472.9 2106 WA4ZKO EM78pp 878.5 2109 W4ZST EM84ao 1141.2 2111 W4UAL EM63ff 1468.8 2124 N9AMW EN52jv 1104.5 2124 NS2X EM76fg 1099.2 2124 KG9D EM56ug 1289.4 2125 W4YBV EM74 1209.0 2127 N9LB EN52hv 1118.1 2128 KC9CLM EN52rq 1051.5 2129 K4UI EM76es 1067.9 2130 K9KDS EM48wh 1310.3 2139 K4RNV EM94ax 1005.0 2140 N8OL EN62sd 886.3 2141 N9CDX EN41tl 1219.2 2142 KE4SYV EM65rs 1203.1 2142 N0KC EM28 1692.2 2143 KA9DVX EN51gj 1145.8 2144 K9JK/R EN62ad 1009.3 2146 K9PG EN51vt 1035.0 2149 WA0CNS EM48rn 1331.4 2150 KU8F EN71lw 773.1 2152 N8BB EN72qe 735.3 2153 KA2EYH EN60xa 910.9 2154 AJ4A EM77ut 903.1 2154 W8JER EN71ht 802.7 2155 N9DG EN53bj 1157.1 2155 K0HCV EM28ou 1661.1 2159 WB8ZBT EM55dl 1444.4 2159 ND0J EN31ex 1476.5 2203 KC0DEB EM29oc 1651.5 2203 N8OB EN80ko 656.7 shortest skip (408 miles) 2207 K9NZ EM79lk 859.5 2209 KC2TEP FN22ab 63.6 2211 K5KDX EM25sm 1797.9 2212 K4XO EM55cc 1476.0 2213 N5HMH EM32xm 1820.6 2214 WF0N EM28ix 1696.9 2214 KB9SDX EM48tq 1312.5 2214 KB9DAK EN40xg 1224.0 2218 W0VD EM37 1577.0 2220 KI4WEF EM78rm 874.1 2221 WD0ESF EM07qg 2039.0 longest skip (1,267 miles) 2224 AC4G EM65pb 1268.2 2224 KC5KBV EM43aw 1712.1 2228 W4ZRZ EM63st 1353.8 2228 KD0HY EM26wh 1727.4 2231 K4OWB EM67lr 1105.5 2232 KJ4FFM EM65sw 1185.1 2233 K9MRI EN70iu 820.2 2233 K4VVM EM55be 1476.2 2238 K9KEU EN52ro 1052.1 2239 N9WKW EM69oo 987.9 2242 KB0PE EM48ts 1308.8 2244 W0SLW EM48um 1313.5
| "Having more fun with greater frequency." |