Ken Harker WM5R
1997 ARRL June VHF QSO Party - W5EHM (KM5FA, op. )

W5EHM participated in the ARRL June VHF QSO Party conducted from 1800 UTC 14 June 1997 to 0300 UTC 16 June 1997. We operated in the single operator class, with KM5FA operating. We were active on six meters (50 MHz), two meters (144 MHz), and 70cm (432 MHz).

Conditions on six meters were fairly lame compared to expectations. There were a few spotty openings on Saturday but the only significant opening was Sunday night to the midwest about twenty minutes before the end of the contest. We worked several new grids on two meters, which was a pleasant surprise, and even a few local grids on six meters, but nothing new on Es.

This was our first effort on 70cm SSB/CW. Our equipment was a borrowed Microwave Modules transverter connected to our Kenwood TS-830S HF transceiver. We did use a 100W Mirage brick amplifier, but our three or four watts into it could barely bring it up to 15 watts out. Our antenna on 70cm was a 35-element long-boom yagi fed with 65 feet of old RG-8U left over from HF use in years past. Clearly, this was kind of a marginal setup with a lot of room for improvement. In particular, we experienced some absolutely horrific intermodulation all across the 432 MHz weak signal sub-band from all the nearby commercial radio and paging services downtown.

Before the contest, our informal goal was to beat our January 1997 VHF Sweepstakes score and QSO total, which we did. We had 107 QSOs during the contest, with six meter and two meter QSOs and multipliers fairly even. We worked two new grids on six meters, five new grids on two meters, and seven new grids on 70cm. We made three CW QSOs during the contest, including our first ever QSO with DM40 and our first 70cm QSO with EL17.

6m grids worked during the contest

EL08, EL09, EL17, EL18, EL29, EL98, EM00, EM01, EM10, EM20, EM73, EM84, EM95, EN51, EN52, EN61, EN62, EN74, FM04

2m grids worked during the contest

DL99, DM90, EL08, EL09, EL16, EL17, EL18, EL28, EL29, EM00, EM01, EM04, EM10, EM11, EM12, EM13, EM20, EM40

70cm grids worked during the contest

DM90, EL09, EL17, EL29, EM00, EM10, EM20