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Before the contest we got the sad news that our fellow BCC contester Ben, DL6RAI became a silent key while preparing his contest station on P4. He had been a great mentor and fellow competitor and it was always fun to compare our scores while he used low power with a double-zepp at his home location and me using larger antennas and qrp power. I will definitely miss his calls and contest analysis. RIP in contest heaven dr Ben.
The following investigations have been performed to lay the base for a larger group of yagis for the 145 MHz band to be used for contest operation at mount Schneeberg, JO50WB. It has been inspired by the antenna group used by the DR9A contest group at their portable contest QTH. Mount Schneeberg is the highest peak of the Fichtelgebirge located in the northern part of Bavaria close to the Czech border. It is very demanding with respect to weather condition and high-frequency environment. Antennas will have to be setup in spring and removed in autumn since they won’t survive the winter storms.
Read the rest of this entry »Activity moves towards the high bands since the sun activity goes up. One one hand this produces some nice DX openings but produces also some unproductive times especially during dusk. Nevertheless, this contest has been a lot of fun. For the first time I could break the 2000 QSO mark. Read the rest of this entry »
Unfortunately I didn’t get all the sleep that I wanted the night before the contest due to a medical condition in the family. So, I had to take a few short breaks during the contest. Nevertheless, the result is the best I have been achieved so far.
Just a few QSOs for fun as fixes station to support the portable enthusiasts.
This time the station had been prepared well in advance and the operator got a good rest before the start of the contest. High band conditions had been excellent the days before the contest with 15m open to the Pacific in the middle of the night and good 10m openings. So the hopes have been high for a great contest result.
Just a few QSOs during spare time. Fun to see 40m open late in the morning.
Being able to start setting up the station on the weekend before the contest allowed for some extras. So, the tower with 40m beam had already been cranked out and a second double zepp at 16m broadside to North America had been installed. The aim had been to test if such a dipole would give an advantage over the regular dipole towards the US. This dipole is fed with ladder line and got an overkill L-match at the bottom. An additional 1×6 antenna switch had been installed in the attic in order to switch between regular and add-on dipole. It has been quite some effort. However, it paid off eventually. It gave just a little bit of signal improvement in the order of 1..3 db which made a few times the difference of ‘in log’ instead of just ‘heard’. I’m now thinking of a bit more of a permanent installation.
Just a few QSOs for fun without any goal. Good high band conditions.
Family summer holidays brought us to Årø an island in the Little Belt of the Baltic Sea just of the coast of Denmark mainland. I just took basic gear to take part in the weekly OK1WC Memorial Contests and to communicate with the guys back home.