This was my first semi-serious VHF contest effort - I operated from the home qth on 50mhz, 144mhz and 432mhz, and really enjoyed it. I plan on doing more in the future. June can't get here fast enough!

Rig: Icom IC-706IIg

Antennas: PAR SM-50 Moxon for 6m mounted on a painters pole and a Cubex Yellow Jacket 46 quad for 2m/70cm, mounted on a military surplus fiberglass mast.

Both the military mast and the quad arrived during the week before the contest. Both were assembled the night before and day of, with little time to spare. The mast was ordered off of eBay from John Baranosky who runs Barans Surplus in Ashley PA. A copy of the picture he used on eBay can be seen here. He took a bit of time to ship things, but when shipped, I received the packages the next day - in time for the contest. Great service, and I would certainly buy from him again!!

The complete kit consisted of twelve 4 ft long fiberglass poles, a tripod bracket, a set of 4 spreaders, 2 guy rings and a bag to hold everything. Through some online searching, I found that the mast is part of a, now deprecated, camouflage system used by the United States military - they're fairly easy to find on the surplus market. Mine appeared to be new and unused when it arrived.

Setup on the quad from Cubex was fairly simple - all the parts are color coded and came ready for assembly. The instruction sheet was easy to follow. The tips included were helpful, especially regarding using a temporary "mast" to mount the antenna on during assembly. I did find that I felt more comfortable working on the thing while wearing safety glasses - there are plenty of ways to poke an eye out, until everything is built. I also found that I needed to do some small bits of sanding of the fiberglass mast around the holes for the spreaders. I used an abrasive wheel with a Dremel tool, as well as a couple bits of fine grit sandpaper to get the job done. Of course, working with anything fiberglass, gloves, long sleeves and a breathing mask are recommended.

When I had the quad antenna built, I noted that the spreaders didn't exactly line up. One or two of them weren't quite at right angles to one another. I also noted a subtle but progressive offset, as if the boom had been twisted slightly along its axis while the holes for the spreaders were being drilled. I don't have any way to specifically measure whether this affected performance - I suspect it only matters for looks. Using my MFJ-269, I found that the quad tuned up as described in the manual. I fed the antenna with a couple pieces of RG-8X, two halves of a longer piece which had been severed during an english ivy taming effort the previous summer. More on the coax later.

Saturday of the contest dawned with cold windy weather and a big snow storm on the way. It seemed perfect for setting up new and untested antennas on a new and untested mast. I hauled everything outside to the area where I wanted to put things up - only to quickly discover that the mount for my Moxon was the wrong size for the outside of the fiberglass mast, and that the PVC pipe "T" which was the mount for the quad was the wrong size for inside the mast. My best laid plans were starting to come apart only hours before the contest was due to start. Clearly I needed some more schedule 40 pipe, plumbing adapters and of course Duct Tape! The snow had just started coming down in earnest.

Before I could go shopping for antenna mounting bits, my first task was to run a couple errands and make sure we were well provisioned - DC area folks know that everyone needs extra milk and toilet paper before a storm, so, it is a good citizen's first duty to go help clear the shelves at the local grocery stores. I did my part and then headed to the local Mega-lo-hardware store for the important items.

The local emporium was packed with snow shovel, salt and sand purchasers. I headed straight for the electrical aisle first to look at plastic conduit, then, not finding what I wanted, headed to the plumbing aisle. I found a couple of approximately the right parts, but couldn't find any matching items. After some searching, I found a clerk who helped me briefly. He more or less abandoned me after querying whether I had a leak I was trying to fix - to which I muttered something about "No, just putting up an antenna." Before he left, but after giving me a weird look, he made sure I had a shovel, snow-melt and other supplies at home, then admonished me to go watch some football and stay inside. He reminded me there was a "doozy" of a storm coming. I did my best to find plumbing pieces to match what I already had found, then grabbed the cure-all roll of tape and headed home to put things in the air.

The PAR antenna ended up getting mounted on my trusty, well worn painters pole - which has supported a variety of antennas in its time, but never been used for painting. That put moxon up at about 15ft. The quad was mounted on the sectional military mast at about 25ft or so. I didn't use all of the extensions in large part because I made the descision not to guy the mast. There was enough snow coming down, and it was cold enough for me to want to avoid being outside as much as possible. Running guys and finding places to anchor them in the snow wasn't what I really had in mind.

Both antennas had to be turned by the "armstrong" method which also wasn't very fun with the weather. It meant I'd have to take a minute or two to run outside and adjust things if I needed to redirect my signal - not very ideal during a contest. By now, the snow had now accumulated to about 4 or 5 inches.

After all the last minute construction, the errand running, when I had the masts erected and had the antennas up in the air, I was thinking I was running late. For whatever reason, I had in my mind that contest started at 12pm local time 1700 UTC - I thought the test had already started. I shoveled my way to the shack.

Firing up the radio, I found an almost dead band. I only heard one station on 50mhz, calling cq. All the effort and this is all my reward? I double checked my connections, and finding nothing wrong, checked the ARRL's website for times for the contest. I had ended up being done with about an hour and a half to spare - time enough for a couple on-air tests and a calm lunch even! I called the one station to do a quick smoke check, things were working. We moved up to 144mhz and found things working there too. He didn't have a workable 432 mhz antenna so we signed and I went to grab a quick bite to eat.

The contest itself was somewhat less hectic than the run up to it. I was quite happy that things were working at all, and the other stations seemed happy to be making contacts. This was a good indoor sport for a snowy day. The snow tapered off towards the end of the afternoon, but the weather remained cold and windy. I knocked off around dinner time on Saturday, having worked a little over 1/2 the contacts I'd end up with.

Overnight was quite windy. I got up several times to check on the antennas and masts. To my surprise, both made it without any major issue, despite the lack of guys. The painters pole had managed to "unextend" itself - it is a twist lock so this wasn't very surprising. Re-extending it the next morning was tough due to ice inside the pole. I returned to the on-air fray on Sunday, making almost as many contacts as I had the day before. My total, which is admittedly far from a record breaker, claimed 730 points with 69 stations worked, 40 on 50mhz, 24 on 144mhz and 5 on 432mhz.

Throughout the contest I found 6m and 2m worked fairly well for me, but 432mhz was tough, even for stations who were fairly close in. I believe much of this was was due to coax losses - the "best" I had was rg-8x, and it ended up being a fairly long run, down the mast, across the back porch and into the shack. Using an Online coax loss calculator, I calculated that my coax was eating up well over half of the power I was putting out on 432mhz. Next time around, I'm going to look into upgrading to better coax. The problems on 432 may also have been caused by being blocked by neighborhood houses and trees. I have almost no clear line of site to anywhere from the home QTH.

All in all, I had a lot of fun. I'll be back in June!

73, N8YSZ.