Josef “Jeff” Sipek

Successful VHF (and higher bands) contest operating is a bit different from what you may have seen in HF contests or at Field Day. In short:

• Ask stations you work if they have other bands, and then let them know what frequencies and modes you have on those bands.
• If an operator sitting next to you asks you to tell a station to come back to them, it is probably because they didn’t get enough info to log the contact on that band.
• Help relay info between a station (even if you already worked them on your band) and another operator sitting next to you on a different band.

In HF contests, propagation is often very different between bands, so generally it doesn’t make sense to tell the stations you make contacts with about the capabilities you have. As a result, HF contests have very little communication between operators working different bands. VHF and higher band propagation is different—approximately line-of-sight, various tropospheric modes, and generally bouncing signals of objects (rain, aircraft, moon, …). As a result, it makes sense to “move people up the bands”. That is, if you work someone on 2m, try to work them on 1.2m, then 70cm, then 23cm. This is exactly what successful single-operator VHF contest stations do since the higher the band the more difficult it is to make the contact but the more points you get.

In a multi-operator station, things get more interesting. Different operators are often working different bands and so moving a station you just worked to a higher band involves some communication between you the operators sitting next to you. This communication is bidirectional. You want to let higher band operators know to look out for the station you just worked, but the higher band operator may ask you to tell the other station to try again. Higher bands are harder to make a contact on and so it is possible to get close but not close enough to having the full exchange to legitimately log a contact. Telling the other station on a lower band to try again is very common and useful, so don’t forget to help relay information between the operators at your station and the other station as necessary. This is exactly what successful multi-operator VHF contest stations do.

Note that depending on the antenna configuration, when moving people up the bands you may need to include information about the direction to the other station so that the higher band operator can point the antennas at it.