CQ World Wide VHF contest This Weekend!!! (July 20-21, 2013)

[KA9VVQ]

Hi Fellow ORCers!

The CW World Wide VHF contest is this weekend, and Bruce, W9FZ, and I (Janice, KA9VVQ) will be participating in the rover category. “Rover” will be Bruce’s Toyota 4Runner with the morass of antennas on it like it was at Field Day. We’d love to make some QSOs with any ORCers who will be (or are considering) participating. Note that you can score a new QSO with us each time we move into a new grid! So point your antennas at us, and if the propagation gods are willing, let’s have some QSOs!

Here are the details:

CQ World Wide VHF contest

Begins: 1800 UTC (1 pm Central Daylight time) Saturday, July 20, 2013
Ends: 2100 UTC (4 pm Central Daylight Time) Sunday, July 21, 2013

For this contest, 6m and 2m bands, SSB or CW, only! (Bruce and I will have most of the other VHF+ bands if you’re seeking grid squares for other awards as well…just let us know what you’d like to operate on!)

We’ll be using the callsign W9FZ/R

We will announce on the calling frequencies (6m: 50.125; 2m: 144.200) when we get to a new grid and then
we will move to 50.190/144.230.  You will most likely find us CQing on 144.230. If you only have 6m, you will hear us pop up on 50.190 from time-to-time, and we would love to hear calls tailending there.  If you have CW capability on 6m, that will come in REAL handy. Remember, we will go as slowly as you send--we want your Q!!!!

We’ll be chirping on APRS, so you can see where we are on our rove by checking out aprs.fi on the Internet. Head on over to: http://aprs.fi/?call=w9fz-15 to find us!

Our schedule is:

Saturday:
EN43tq 1300L-1430L (1800-1930Z) Hillsboro, WI, (Vernon County)

EN53fx 1530L-1700L (2030-2200Z) Near Coloma, WI (Waushara County)

EN54fa 1700L-1830L (2200-2330Z) Near Coloma, WI  (Waushara County)

EN44xm 1930L-2100L (0030-0200Z) Powers Bluff Co Park , southeast of Marshfield (Wood County)

Sunday:
EN45xa 0800L-0930L (1300-1430Z) East of Athens, WI  (Marathon County)

EN55aa 1000L-1130L (1500-1630Z) East of Athens, WI (Marathon County)

EN56bc 1300L-1430L (1800-1930Z) Manitowish Waters Airport (Vilas County)

EN46sa 1500L-1600L (2000-2100Z) Butternut, WI  (Ashland County)


Bruce and I look forward to working all of our friends in the region AND new stations too!

73!

Janice, KA9VVQ and Bruce, W9FZ

[N9LOO]

Thanks for the information Janice.  I've linked this posting to the calendar so people can quickly bring up the posting.  Good luck!

[K9DJT]

Thanks for your posting Janice.  It appears you guys had a really cool road trip.  It was the first time I ever tracked anyone using APRS.  I was only able to operate 6M and that was using my tri-band beam.  Made 22 contacts and added a few grid-squares to my log.  Had my FT-2000 with the dual receive set up so that I was operating off the main VFO and then had the second set to 50.190 Mhz listening for you guys.  I did hear you on CW and tried to make contact but evidently you weren't able to hear me.  Ken Boston, W9GA, was also trying you at the same time and we may have interfered with each other.  Anyway, I had fun and look forward to trying it again next year with a 6M beam.

I trust you will be posting your numbers as far as contacts per band.

Say hi to Bruce for me and 73,

Gary
K9DJT

[KA9VVQ]

Hi Gary,

Sorry we didn't hear you on 6m, but thanks for trying. Conditions were, in general, poor on both 2m and 6m, but the trip was a lot of fun. One problem we had was that Bruce plugged the 6m rig into the wrong amplifier (the 222 MHz amplifier), so probably at best we were only putting out about 20W on 6m instead of 160W. Ugh. We figured out the error only during the last hour of the contest. We were wondering why we could hear a bunch of people on 6m Sat. night during the brief band opening, but no seemed to hear us.   Now we need to check out the 6m rig and amplifier to see that we didn't damage them.

Our score and a write up of the rove will appear in the next ORC newsletter.

Thanks again for looking for us.

Janice, KA9VVQ and Bruce, W9FZ