N5XU participated in the ARRL September VHF QSO Party conducted from 1800UTC 8 September to 0300UTC 10 September 2001. We operated in the limited multioperator class, with W5JLP, KB5LBN, KM5TY, and WM5R operating. We were active on 50 MHz, 144 MHz, 222 MHz, and 432 MHz.
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The contest was pretty dull, frankly. We perceived no enhanced propagation conditions at any point during the contest. We worked only one station outside of the state on six meters, and that was pretty clearly on a random meteor burn. Conditions were especially bad Sunday morning, with S9 static crashes from the rain and literally no new stations on the air for a three hour period. Activity from both San Antonio and Houston (especially Houston) was below average. Activity from Dallas was average with the past couple of years, but still below where it was three to four years ago.
We had been planning to get on 1296 MHz as well, but there's something not right in the receive side of things - either in the transverter or the preamp (both of which are in a box at the top of the tower) so we were unable to get on that band during the contest. All of our other equipment performed well during the entire length of the contest.
Unfortunately, there was only one serious rover effort in the state this contest and one other rover who just happened to be driving home that weekend. More rovers would have made the contest more fun, but it seems like rover activity in Texas is in gradual decline.
This was the first N5XU contest effort to include Gary KM5TY, a new student on campus. Gary did a great job, and I'm sure helped out our score quite a bit. He even dealt with our one local VHF "helper" pretty well!
| Frequency | QSOs | Points | Grids |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 MHz | 36 | 36 | 10 |
| 144 MHz | 58 | 58 | 17 |
| 222 MHz | 12 | 24 | 9 |
| 432 MHz | 24 | 48 | 9 |
| Total | 130 | 166 | 45 |
| Claimed score | 7,470 |
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Contest Logging was done with TR LOG contest logging software. The following reports and log were created using TR LOG's post-contest processor.
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Last Updated 26 June 2020 wm5r@wm5r.org |