DK3WE Personal Site
Family obligations prevented us to work from our usual portable QTH in JO61JF. So, we decided to run the contest from home. Günter, DL5YYM, came up with the idea of using DK65DARC. This is a special call of 65 year celebrations of the DARC. Although, it is a monster call for working a VHF contest we agreed.
Another weekend of typical contest weather with strong wind and occasional heavy showers. Although this is not unusual, we got the feeling that participation lacked quite a lot. The result is about 50k points less than last year when we operated with almost the same equipment.
We have had planned a team effort from our traditional QTH ‘Deditzhoehe’. However, a couple days before the contest almost all participants had to cancel. So, this effort was canceled. One option would have been to join the effort of the DQ7A team. However, the weather forecast wasn’t very promising for the Nuremberg region. So, I decided for the DL2LSM home QTH with a much better weather prognosis. Luckily, it proved right and we had sunshine all weekend long in JO61GH.
It has been an unusual and strange summer this year in Germany. There have been just a few sunny and dry days during the entire month of August. The first weekend of September is usually already a taste of autumn. However, not this year. It has been hot and humid all weekend. Luckily, the thunder storms around missed us and we could operate the entire contest time and weren’t forced to stop. The only rain we got hit us when the last half hour of dismantling the station. So, the tent has been trenched eventually. However, there has been a lot of flashing around we could see. This definitely keeps the tension up. (more…)
The Marconi Memorial Contest is normally quite a lot of fun and so has been this time. The weather forecast hasn’t been very fortunate. It had promised rain all Saturday morning till the start of the contest. Luckily, it had been wrong. It drizzled a bit when we started setting up the antennas but stopped pretty soon. So, we have been able to setup the station in dry but windy conditions. There have been a number of showers during the duration of the contest. However, it cleared for station dismantling. The only drawback has been the heavy wind with occasional gusts. (more…)
DL5YYM decided to go on holiday to 3V for the July contest this year. So, he missed an almost perfect weekend: perfect weather, good tropo conditions to the British Islands, some Aurora to Scandinavia. We are just missing some more operators to operate more bands. The equipment is there.
We had to skip the first sub-regional contest due to operator illness and the bad weather. So, finally spring is back and we are back in business.
In principle the March contest is a great opportunity for us to score big since most of the groups can’t use their normal qth’s. However, the long winter conditions prevented us as well from using our hill for contest purposes. There have been still ice and now on the mountain. Additionally, Jens (DH0LS) called in sick. So, DF0MTL skipped this contest.
The author wasn’t unable to take part in his favorite contest of the year due to family obligations. He was forced to spend some time in 8Q-land instead. Therefore, no big operation has been planned and the group separated for the last contest of the year into to individual operations. DQ7A operated at Haeuselstein (JN59RJ) and DF0MTL from Deditzhöhe (JO61JF), respectively.
Thanks everybody for the contacts and we hope to see everybody – and hopefully a few more – in March of next year.