AA5PR/R in CQWW VHF


John Klem
 

I stayed pretty close to home for this one:  DM75 and DM74 Saturday, and DM55 Sunday.  

Saturday was not great, although it picked up somewhat later in the day when I was in DM74.  I was happy to work a few east coast stations, but I suspect that many stations in EM were pointing east or toward Asia instead of toward us.  

I didn't spend much time planning the trip to DM55, so it was great to find a nice forested spot right on the continental divide, with a good radio horizon in most directions.

About 20% of my QSOs were SSB, and the remainder FT8.  I would have enjoyed making more SSB contacts, but that well ran dry pretty quickly.  FT4 will wait until I implement fully automated logging, which didn't seem necessary until now.

The lack of 2 m activity was pretty disappointing, but it took some of the sting out of the realization that my brand new 2 m amplifier wouldn't key on SSB.

Total contacts: 133
Total multipliers: 80
Score: 10,880

Station
6 m:  100 W + Moxon
2 m:  4 W SSB, 80 W FT8 + 7 elements

John, AA5PR