Jan 27 2013
January 2013 VHF Contest
A lot has happened since my last VHF contest twelve months ago. I’m active in the PNW VHF Society as a Director and Webmaster. I’ve refined my equipment and tested new VHF techniques. And I finished activating all eighteen grid squares in the state of Washington, becoming the first person to win this award.
My logger of choice for this rover-in-motion is a $60 Sony ICD-AX412 digital audio recorder. With an extra memory card it can store 100 hours. Thee are larger micro-SD cards which could store 900 hours. It records MP3 in stereo with easy transfer to the computer. The Sony software is great: variable speed playback without changing pitch. Recording quality is excellent but the road noise defeated its VOX. I recorded many segments of high quality pavement rumble interspersed with my CQs.
Now I am interested in VHF locations in Oregon, so this contest gave me a good chance to explore south of home.
I drove the I-5 corridor from Eugene, Oregon to Marysville, Washington during the 2013 January ARRL VHF Contest on January 19-20, 2013. The total distance traveled from door to door was 941 miles.
I operated 17 hours of the 33-hour contest, averaging 15.35 contacts per hour of activity. I averaged 5.11 contacts per gallon and 65.25 contacts per gas tank.
Results
The contest activity was steady along this route that includes major metro centers of Portland, Tacoma, Seattle and Everett.
| Band | Contacts | Points | Grids |
| 50 | 109 | 109 | 14 |
| 144 | 119 | 119 | 13 |
| 432 | 34 | 68 | 5 |
| 296 | 32 Sum of Unique Grids | ||
| +7 One multiplier for each grid activated | |||
| 39 Rover multiplier | |||
| Score = 11,544 = 296 points x 39 multipliers | |||
My Popularity Poll
- Eric N7EPD – 14 contacts with me
- Darryl WW7D /R – 12
- Tom K7ZL /R – 12
- Dale KD7UO – 12
- Bruce KI7JA – 9
- Jim K7ND – 9
- Tom KE7SW – 8
- Gary WA7BBJ /R – 7
- Mike WB7FJG – 7
- Merle W7YOZ – 7
- Ray W7GLF – 7
