ZL Festival

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.  (more…)

Back to the Roots on Årø

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. 

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Participation in Danger

The storm system Herwart endangered my participation in the CW part of the CQWW contest this time. During the lsat days of October it split a chestnut tree about 25m high at the DL2LSM QTH. About a third of the tree fell onto the guying cables of the 20m high central mast. The latter holds the 2m horizontal antenna as well as the 2-by-20m dipole which is essential for any serious low band work from this QTH. Actually, none of the 4mm and 5mm steel cables broke. However they got stretched quite a bit and as a consequence the top of the antenna got bent.

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SO3K – Single Operator Three Kids

In principle all had been prepared to run this contest as it had been done last year. However, DL2JRM and DL8DYL bailed out on short notice to do an individual approach as DR7B/P. I decided to go on with the project anyway since I had promised the kids some camping on the hill.

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Killer Sun

This is the second CQ WPX CW contest from the DL2LSM QTH in a row. I have been ahead of last years performance until the sun shut down the bands for quite a while. So, I kept the number of QSOs almost constant. However, the final result is a bit lower compared to last year.
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Happy Second

The final scores for the CQWW DX CW 2016 are out and the ranking from the claimed scores stands. Thus, giving me a second place finish after two consecutive wins in this contest. Karel, OK2FD, wins this time with almost the same number of QSOs but quite some more multis. Congratulations. Considering the illness and the resulting operating time during the weekend I’m still quite happy with the result and will definitely try to fight back in the 2017 competition.

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First Serious Participation

The idea of taking part in the IARU Region I Fieldday came up when chatting with René, DL2JRM, during the annual BCC Meeting 2016. It has been decided that DL2JRM provides the Fieldday-QTH and is responsible for all social activities wheras DL2LSM and DK3WE provide the rig as well as housing. The team has been joined by Irina, DL8DYL, on short notice. We decided to play with the big boys in the Low-Power-Unassisted category.

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Continuous Improvement

The CQ WPX CW contest has been in coincidence with the family holidays on Bornholm Island for the last couple of years. However, my daughter started school last September and consequently family holidays moved to August. So, this WPX participation has been the first one from the DL2LSM QTH for quite a while. The overall result is comparable to the one from last year despite the declining sun activity. So, it has been managed to work about 100 more QSOs whie keeping the QSO points and prefixes at a constant level.

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Accuracy Pays Off

It has been a real surprise to me having a look at the results of the CQ WWDX CW contest 2015. The claimed scores put me in second place with Karel, OK2FD, leading the pack by a clear margin. However, he lost more than 6 percent of his score during the process of log checking. In contrast my result got reduced by only 2.4 percent. When the dust settled the difference between the two of us is less than a single DX or two inner European QSOs. Luckily – at least for me – the initial ranking got reversed. So, giving me my  second consecutive win in this contest.

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Eventually

It took some time but eventually it arrived. My plaque won in the CQ WWDX CW 2014 has been delivered yesterday. So, I have to find a reasonable place now for display 🙂