Introduction:

January contest conditions are not supposed to be all that great, at least they were not in the past for me. I found that the contest turned out to be fairly decent here in NW Iowa. Lots of factors came into play for conditions. We had been having some unseasonably warm weather here in the Midwest, not to mention hardly any snow. In addition, the apparent double peak in the sunspot cycle proved out to bring in some contacts that may have not have happened otherwise. The weather turned out to be very nice that weekend, no snow storms or winds, ice, etc. This made for some decent conditions on the roads for the rovers as well. One never knows what the January weather will bring.

Preparation and Investigation of the Gear:

After the September VHF QSO Party ended, I knew that Gene – NØDQS/R was having some issues with the 3456 Mhz band module I had built about a year earlier. We seemed to have more trouble making contacts on that band than we had in the past. Gene and I met in Sioux City one day and he turned over the rover modules for me to test out and check on what may or may not be wrong with them.

Gene had done some preliminary testing on the 3456 module just prior and it appear according to the LCD meters mounted on the transverter enclosure, that the power output was way down. He tested the IF radio, a FT-736R and found that the output of that had dropped to less than a 1/2 a watt at 144 Mhz. We had the transverters setup for about 2.5 to 3 watts drive.

Bringing the rack of gear into the shack and testing the output of the 3456 Mhz transverter with 1/2 a watt a drive revealed that it was only putting out about 300 mw. This would explain why he was so weak on this band. That particular drive level brought the 902 and 2304 Mhz units output down as well, but not so drastically. We determined that doing a board level pot adjustment for the drive setting on the FT-736R was not reliable enough to use as the IF. Maybe it was a dirty potentiometer or possibly affected by temperature, or whatever. We just could not seem to get the output to a reliable or repeatable level.

I had been using a FT-100D as the IF driver for my higher band transverters in the shack.  Via the menu adjustments, I could get a solid 3 watts out on the low end of the menu setting. This always seemed reliable and quite repeatable when changing the menu settings. With that we decided to us a FT-100 that Gene picked up at a hamfest as the new IF for 902, 2304 and 3456 Mhz of his rover setup.

Making adjustments:

I took my FT-100D and set up the output for 3 watts via the 144 Mhz PO menu setting, which incidentally gets set to zero for 3 watts out. The testing brought the output of the 15 watt 3456 Mhz amplifier up to 7 or so watts. Finding this not to be what it should. I tweaked around some more and decided to eliminate the 3 dB attenuator on the input of the amplifier. Apparently the transverter was not giving me the output as it had in the past. For what reason I do not know. This brought the output back up to about 13 watts and with little time left to do more testing, decided that was close enough for now.

The 902 amplifier was putting out a solid 45 watts, when it had been doing 50 when I first installed it. The 2304 Mhz amp was putting out 32 watts, right where it should be. With that and putting together PTT cables specific for the FT-100, all was ready to go.  I Just had to get the equipment back to NØDQS/R.

I had not fired up my tower transverters since October, so putting power to those was a bit unnerving since the last time I did that before the September Contest, I had a meltdown. But all was well and I let them heat up for quite some time before driving them a bit. All tested well and my weak signal source by DEMI was showing that things upstairs were working normal on the RX side. My digital meters that monitored the outputs of the tower transverters and amps were indicating good power output as well. Nice to know things were working well.

902 Problems:

During the testing period of all the shack gear, I noticed that my 902 amp was working just fine one day, and then the next was only putting out about 45 watts. Normally it was very solid at 150+ watts. I dug into it abit and was not able to determine the cause of this problem. I checked the drive level from the IF and increasing that did not make any difference on the amplifier output. I also adjusted the drive level attenuator in the transverter, which had no effect as well. From there I took out some attenuation between the transverter and amplifier, again no amplifier output increase.

I was sure at this point that there was something wrong inside the amplifier itself. I assumed that perhaps some gain stage was fried. However, it was putting out 45 or so watts, so I just let it go at that. I had no time to be working on that right before the contest. I also wanted to have at least the power level I had. Testing on the air indicated that there were no audio issues, so I ran with the amp as it was and hoped it would survive the contest.

The Contest:

The contest started out fairly low key. Gene, NØDQS/R was in the southern part of Iowa and was not where he intended to be at the start. With that I called CQ up towards the EN34 area with no luck. Where was everyone? Well I finally raised a few locals to the NW and also picked up DN84. WØPUF up there was coming in but could not copy me on SSB, so I sent CW up there and received on SSB. The QSB was very dramatic. It was a nice cross-mode contact. Thanks to those who let me know he was on the air.

I then managed to get a hold of NØDQS/R in EN20 / EN30 and worked him on all the bands. Perry, KØKD was in there as well, it was nice to hear him in there for the contest! Another plus was to work W7XU and NØQJM, but then their son Nolan, NØLAN was there to give out contacts as well!

Then managed to raise Gary WØGHZ and worked all the way through 2304, but no luck on 3456 Mhz. All contacts to 2230 UTC were pretty much the local region with the exception of NØPB, Phil down in Missouri.

The band was open to the south with QSB just after that with NØLL, NØKQY and KAØMR coming in. The band was open to the south on and off, one just had to watch for it. Others during the evening came in very well for a bit and then were gone. One had to be on the ball to catch these folks. Also, to the north was worth watching. NØMSS in EN16 came blasting through around 0100 and was worked through 432 Mhz. Matt, KFØQ/R in EN33 at the time was found and worked through 1296 Mhz. I was having no luck hearing or finding the Cedar Rapids group of rovers. NAØIA, etc. These folks were running omnis on the high bands and lower gain antennas on the lower bands, so they were not to be heard from this QTH even though sought after and listened for many times.

I then worked Marc, WBØTEM. Nice to get him during the contest. We worked through 1296 Mhz. He had to do some configuring in the shack to get his units on the air, but I did not mind waiting to get QSOs.

The last contact of the night was around 0530 before the meteor scatter scheds took place. The band was open much of the time, the activity level seemed to be down a bit.

Patricia decided to join the contest, too bad but the FRS bands don't count!

I managed some WSJT scheds with and few station and picked up some random WSJT contacts as well. The rocks were great and could have made a ton of QSOs on 6M, but other than the few I worked, there just wasn't anyone else around. I called CQ for a few hours and gave up. Stations worked on WSJT - W2FU - AK3E - N8OC. Had a busted QSO with K3YTL, but I was hearing him very well for about an hour as he worked other stations. Not sure why he did not work me, must have been a RX problem as I had no problem working others. WSJT is the BEST KEPT SECRET for contesters looking for late night multipliers while nothing else is going on. SPREAD THE WORD. I was on WSJT from 0700 to 1200 UTC. The next contact did not take place until K2DRH woke me up as he blasted my headphones as I dozed on and off at 1351 UTC.

At 1432, I managed to work Bob, K2YAZ up in EN74. Bob always manages to get down here during the contest, but we could only make it on 2M.

Then the thing happened that I had been hoping for, which I figure saved the contest! The 6 Meter band had been doing very well during the previous couple of months in terms of DX. Well during the DX season and with the high solar flux values, the stateside backscatter had been awesome. However, the week before the contest, 6 Meters had kind of petered-out and no backscatter had been evident for quite some time. I held high hopes for it however since the flux had been increasing in the last week, with thoughts that something would bust loose during the contest. I was not disappointed!

I kept a close look on 6 Meters and at 1430 started hearing the backscatter begin. This lasted until about 1800 UTC. There were some pretty good pileups going on the bigger gun stations like K9HMB and others. Some were hard to get through to. My 300 watts on 6M was not too good a level to get everyone's attention, so I bounced between CW and SSB. I called CQ a lot and hunted around for others. The backscatter covered pretty much to the NE and SE, as well as a few to the south and NW. No DX was heard but I managed to work about 20 QSOs on backscatter.

In the middle of all of the backscatter, I combed the 2 Meter band and linked up with NØDQS/R in EN24 and EN34. KFØQ/R was also in there from EN44. I also ran into N2BJ in EN61 on 6 Meters, we decided to go try the higher bands and managed to work through 902 Mhz. The band died apparently when we tried to get on 1296 Mhz, there was quite a bit of QSB. This was around 1600 UTC.

From 1800 UTC to 2230 UTC, things were pretty slow, no activity was found other than working NØDQS/R and KFØQ/R. Without these guys, I probably would have fallen asleep! I did manage however to pick up Gary, WØGHZ on 3456 Mhz as the band was in a bit better shape. Also, WØDMR, Dale was in there on 2 Meters. It was nice to hear him on as well. I thought that the lull in the action ended as I caught up with Larry, NØLL and worked him on 1296 Mhz at 2230 UTC. But I did not make other contact until an hour later as I swung the beams north and caught Bill - KØAWU in EN37 and Don, KAØBZV in EN26.

From there, no activity except Gene, NØDQS/R as we kept clipping off the QSOs and grids. We had a clean sweep so far and things seemed to be holding together for him. Gene was making lots of contacts where ever he went.

At 0011, a bit of a bonus came along as I picked up a few JAs on 6 Meters, two grids as well, QM08 QN02! Wish I would have kept a closer eye on this as I caught just the end of the JA opening, probably could have worked a bunch!

After that, picked up some locals. Husband and wife team, Pete NØTCT and Ann, NØTCX, they always manage to get on and give me a few contacts. Gary, WYØV was in there from Sioux City as well, thanks Gary! Then I came across an old friend, Terry - NØVJN. Nice to hear him on 2 Meter SSB again.

The contest ended by picking up a few more the north, Jim KBØCIM, Mark - KBØPYO and John, KBØZEV. Caught Gene, NØDQS/R in the last grid and managed one of two contacts with the Cedar Rapids Rovers, NØLN0/R on 2 Meters.

I heard that the 6 Meter band opened to the east at the end of the contest, just never had time to check it out.

Rover QSOs % of Total QSOs = 41.8% WOW! Who says rovers are not necessary? Another clean sweep with NØDQS/R.