June VHF Contest -STARTS TODAY

ARRL June VHF QSO Party: Hoping for better cond. on 6 meters. Nothing but locals for several hours. Finally an opening to the NE (N. Hamp, Maine) from my place in Dixie around 6pm. Worked 4 of them. Going to stick with it this evening and tomorrow.
When 6 is open It's Open and you can make contacts with less than optimum antennas. I'm having to use a 60M horizontal dipole that works and tunes on 60,15,10, and 6.
Update: Same pipeline stayed open past 8:30 eastern. Ended up working about a dozen stations in the NE.

Finally got the antennas up and had some fun. 6 meter ssb wore me out! I did strictly phone and managed 32,828 points. Not too shabby I guess.. I have always dabbled in contests for grids I needed but never submitted a log until this year.

2 was up and down but managed to work NE, MN, MO, AR, TX, IN, KY, WS and all over IL. Nice Eskip opening Sunday night! I think I might have picked up a couple new grids but need to confirm... Getting close to VUCC so better find out lol.

New to 222 and 432 but impressed with just how quiet they are and how well the new yagis performed. Several contacts were easier copy on 222 then 2 meters do to the low noise floor. Used a Ukraine transverter with my TS2000 into a Mirage brick. 16 element K1FO 222 at 55 ft. Made 17 contacts on 222 and 18 on 432. Learned the M2 9wl 28 element 432 beam is tight and leaves little room for error when aiming. When your on em your on em.

Was able to pick up 2 grids on 1296. Also a new band to me but very cool. Contacts were 97 and 182 air miles.. easy copy too. Just 10 watts to a 45 element loop yagi at 62 ft.

6 meters was nuts. Ran a pile, one after another, Saturday and Sunday for a while then did the hunt and pounce as well. Made 171 contacts coming from all different directions. Saturday aimed my 100 watts into 5 elements at 48 ft west and worked TX and CO while easily getting east coast off the back.. like I said it was nuts. Sunday brought FL and the mid Atlantic and some deep south. Worked into far northeast coast Canada Saturday then Mexico on Sunday.

It was a lot of work putting together/tuning all the antennas and raising them by myself but a great learning experience. The re-purposed 7/8 & 1/2 hardline worked great and the 9700 and other rigs played well.

All in all I enjoyed myself and look forward to making a couple improvements for the next one if work and family alow me to participate. If you've never tried weak signal vhf and up.. I recommend it. It takes patients but to me it's more thrilling to work 1000 miles on 144 mhz then across the world on HF. ..
73 all..

Better Opening on Sunday on 6 meters. From Dixie, got west to West Texas, up to Nebraska, up again to Canada and the rest around the midwest & NE. About 30 contacts in all in a combined 3 hrs off and on as I could get some radio time. Always fun in June.

Outstanding job guys!!

BJ radionut said:

My best "Q" was EA8BPX @ 22:34z...50.180... 6.11.22
Canary Islands-Africa

Roger/W4MW using AA4ZZ Contest call had almost 900 "Q's" I am hearing on 6m/SSB...WOW crazy...He never slept, I think!
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Nice view from his deck!!!

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Worked ZZ last year on 2m. Had a good 24 hr long tropo pass into the Carolinas. At times he was S9 off the back of my beam. Aimed at him and worked him QRP first call on ssb. Pretty much used him as a ssb beacon to my east.

Nice work Gary. You working toward dxcc on 6? Analog only?