JUNE VHF CONTEST 2025
W2RME multi-unlimited





A March windstorm took down the VHF contesting tower at the local club's hilltop QTH and totaled the 6m Yagi, significantly damaged the 2m Yagi, and lightly damaged the 432 Yagi. The antennas that are mounted on the club shack (222/902/1296) were unaffected. I agreed to supply antennas and my contest van as an antenna support structure to help get 6m/2m/432 on the air for the June VHF Contest. Because of the forecast of rain for Saturday and Sunday, and because of the long setup time, the day before the contest was used to install feedlines and the rotor control cable from the shack to the area where the van would be located the next day. We also used Friday to set up the TX/RX equipment inside the building to ensure that we had as much time as possible to finish setting up the outdoor stuff Saturday morning. That turned out to be a great plan because we would have worked significantly past the start of contest time otherwise. The antenna analyzer showed a good match on all antenna systems and we were thankful to be on the air.

The first QSOs in the log were New Hampshire station AF1T on all 6 bands, which turned out to be our only all-band sweep for the weekend. K2QO/R would likely have been another, but his 902 station was down for the weekend due to a problem encountered while setting up his rover station for the contest. In the third hour, 6m slowly came to life. The strongest signals were from Florida, but we did work into the midwest also. With the band still open at 9:40 PM it was a shame to have to shut down for the evening.

Six meters was open again Sunday morning to the same part of Florida, and the same stations who were the loudest on the previous day were the loudest again. Unfortunately, that means fewer multipliers. Nonetheless, the ionization was so strong that we heard backscatter from most of the high power stations around the northeast. We turned the antenna east Sunday afternoon and worked the Canary Islands on triple-hop (EA8NF IL28) which would be our best DX on 6m for the weekend at 3456 mi / 5562 km. Best DX on 2m/222/432 was Maryland station K1RZ FM19 at 235 mi / 378 km. Best DX on 902/1296 was AF1T FN43 at 193 mi / 311 km. We began tearing down the portable equipment at 6:30 PM.

Equipment was an Icom IC-7300 for 6m and a Kenwood TS-2000 for 2m/432/1296 plus 10m IF for 222. There were amplifiers with built-in preamps for the bottom 4 bands. There was an IC-706 and Q5 transverter at 25w for 902, all powered by battery. Antennas were a 5-el Yagi for 6m, a 4-stack omni (4 VHF loops) for 2m, 10-el Yagi for 222, 15-el Yagi for 432, 17-el end-mount Yagi for 902 and 22-el end-mount Yagi for 1296. The claimed score was 6,930.