Amateur Radio

June 2003 VHF contest:

This contest was an interesting one. Charlie (N0AKC) had persuaded me to go down to his inlaw's in EN43gm (Eitzen, MN) for the contest. A few weeks prior to the contest KB9PJL and I met Charlie down there to scope out the site. There is a 40 foot windmill tower there on the farm, and his father in law has power to a shed within decent distance to the prospective tower sites. We borrowed a tilt up base from W0AIH (thanks) and tentitively decided where things would go.

Anyhoo, of course the "dark clouds" seemed to loom on the horizon. The B.U.T.T. (Big Ugly Travelling Thing) also known in certain circles as "Shamu the big blue whale", "The contest rig", "The Mobile Comm Center", and last but not least "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That thing runs??" was in the shop for rear spring mount repairs. (The rear leaf was flopping) After 3 weeks of the repair shop not working on it even when the part was found...I brought it to another place that Thursday and had them do the work and subsequently also weld on the class 3 hitch so I could tow the porta-tower. I made it on the road a bit late, but got to the site about 6pm Friday night. "Dark clouds" went away *G* other than the "real ones that seemed to be present off in the distance.

I started setting up the portable tilt-up base that was loaned to me by W0AIH. The 6-meter 5 element went on this tower (25 Feet). After that was rigged up, I set up the porta-tower with the high band stack on it (144 Mhz-1296 Mhz). By the time I got everything all guyed down, cables run and the van somewhat set up for operations, it was close to midnight, so I took a little nap until about 9am Saturday morning. I really had no major troubles this time...rare...and the contesting went very well. Also, the clouds that seemed to be present the night before were completely gone and the weekend was beautiful.

The rigs run were a Ranger (RCI) 5054 for 6-meter running 25 watts into a modified Cushcraft 5 element yagi up about 25 feet. The 144, 222, 432, and 1296 Mhz bands (20-30 feet up on the portatower) were run on a Yaesu FT-736R with about 35 watts on all bands except 1296 which was running 18 watts...this band with that power ended up placing me in High-power class...Oh well. The antennas used for these bands were all homebrew. The 1296 was a 31 element, 432 was 18 element, 222 was 10 element, and the 144 was a 12 element. All in all, the contest went well, I got CW practice in for some of the contacts, which helped as I wouldn't have made some of them otherwise. Everything came down safe and I got home without mishap, so it turned out good; plus I gave my January score a good slap as I surpassed it by a little less than 5X.

I had a slow, relaxing ride home on Monday and took a long nap before I went to work on Tuesday. I will most likely be down there again for the September contest this year running the same bands, but possibly with some power help...not sure yet.

Pics to be added soon....I have the pics, but have to scan them now.

Contest results: N9TTX/0 20,574 points; 193 Q's; 81 mults; Class B; Section: MN. 265 out of 818; 77 out of 157 in class B; 6th out of 10 in class B Dakota Division; 6 out of 9 in class B in MN.