This year’s overall winner of the Maine 2 Meter FM Simplex Challenge is: Dick Bean K1HC, from Westwood, Massachusetts, who made a total of 95 QSOs, in 41 different towns, for a total of 3,895 points. Congratulations on a job well done! K1HC operated as Fixed Medium from his vacation home in Haprswell, Maine, using an Icom IC-9700 into a Diamond X50 at 295′ above sea level, during the contest.
The continuing pandemic meant that served agencies, such as the National Weather Service, County EMAs, and Red Cross facilities were closed to the public, so we didn’t have any activations from those places like in years past. There was also a continuation of the trend from the previous year, which saw more participants operate from their own homes.
John Horton KC1LSO, and Dakota Dumont KB1YYC, operated as QRP mobiles, while Stefania Watson K1GJY, Tim Watson KB1HNZ, Eric Emery N1RXR, and Jason Andrews W1SFS operated in the Medium Mobile category. Dakota, John, and Eric were heard mostly in the towns around Portland and west (Falmouth, Yarmouth, Cumberland, Westbrook, Windham, etc.), while Jason travelled south from the Scarborough area. Tim and Stefania covered the most ground, ranging from Camp Ellis to Waldoboro.
Similar to years past, the most popular categories were the medium-powered classes, and they were also the most competitive, with K1GJY and KB1HNZ being separated by only 1 QSOs in Medium Mobile, and Medium Fixed tied a record for the number of entries. K1HC and WD1F led the pack, but K1JJS and KB1FGF were separated by just 10 QSOs and even on multipliers.
Some stations that appeared in many logs, include W1DYJ, KC1MSQ, N1TTT, KA1KJR, KC1HJN, and WZ1J.
The Merrymeeting Amateur Radio Association (MARA) captured the club competition for the first time, earning 7,782 points from 4 logs. Congratulations on a job well done!
Click here for complete details, and to see all the category winners.
The next Maine 2 Meter FM Simplex Challenge takes place Saturday, April 2, 2022.
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