6 Metre Net Update

Our 6 metre net almost doubled in size this week with 5 stations worked, plus 2 listener reports. As scheduled, we met on 50.175 upper sideband last Monday evening at 8pm. The participants were:

Brian, VE3IBW, with 10 watts horizontally polarized
Brad, VE3HII, with 12 watts into a rotatable dipole
Steve, VE3UT, probably 100 watts into a beam pointed at Aurora/Newmarket
Charlie, VE3SYK, 90 watts into a beam
Chris, VE3NRT, 250 watts to a Butternut vertical at 22'

Charlie was the winner as he could hear all other stations. Chris could hear everyone except Steve, while Brad and Brian could only hear Charlie and Chris. Steve VA3SRV down in Bradford could only hear Charlie on his RTL2832 dongle, while Bob VA3IL could hear Chris and Charlie using an 80M horizontal loop as a receiving antenna from about 20km away.

The longest path was from Charlie to Steve at about 50km. Charlie described the signal as S1. Noise on VE3NRT's vertical was a healthy S5 so while Steve's transmissions were heard, they weren't readable.

At 8:30 VE3IBW and VE3NRT switched over to FM on 52.525MHz to try and raise Don VE3IXJ. Brian thought he heard him but no further contact was made. VE3NRT reported Brian's signal at almost full quieting.

I hope we can get some new participants for this Monday's net. VE3NRT will upload all contacts to LoTW.

Lastly, the January VHF Contest starts today at 2pm. Some local amateurs will be participating in the contest and if you get the chance fire up rig on 6m and give them some contacts.