CQ VHF Contest

I traveled to the top of Mount Wachusett just 30 minutes from my home to work the CQ Magazine VHF contest. I had to skip this last year, so I can only compare my effort to the 2005 contest. I made 62 QSOs in about 5 hours for about 1400 points (claimed). We'll see what the total is after adjudication. Anyway, this is about twice what I did in 2005 so I'm very pleased.
The Buddipole 6m beam worked very well. I set it up as described here and it worked like a charm. After assembly I put the AntennaSmith on it just to make sure I had not goofed anything up. I knew within 20 seconds that I had not. I bought this analyzer as a time saving device and boy does it save time! I set it to sweep the 6m band and plot the SWR. In an instant I could see the range of frequencies where the match was 2:1 or better, and could see the roll off from there. The match was fine but I'm sure I could have made whatever adjustments necessary in just minutes. Having a tool like this is a big confidence builder. I'm fearless with this thing! Show me a goofed-up antenna and I'll debug it!
We had attempted some 6m work while on Montserrat but with no luck. I will likely be active on 6m while on St. Kitts before and after the CQ WW SSB contest in October. So, this was good practice for that deployment. Perhaps I'll even be able to find a few moments to go out to Georges Island before the end of the Summer and play on the Magic Band.
My log is updated. I have generated my Cabrillo file for the contest with Cab-converter and have even emailed it into the contest robot. Now that my "chores" are done, it is time to get back to more important things. I'm on page 115 of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". No. Don't tell me how it ends. {grin}