Marconi Memorial Contest 2011

They did it again

Unfortunately, the members of the DK0CG contest team lost their battle for the 3rd place in the German Contest Trophy against the DF0YY team in October. Nevertheless, they are still in a good mood and joined us for the final frontier of the contest year 2011. And as far as I can see they didn’t regret.

In contrast to other years the weather has been more than perfect. It has been warm and sunny during the day and even at night it hasn’t been to chilly. It is of course very nice to be able to set up the station as well as tier it down in absolutely dry conditions. However, it allowed our opponents as well to use their contest sites in the mountains. Well we will see where we end up in the ranks.

Setting up the 8-by-6 element antenna started on Friday late morning by DL2LSM and DK3WE in perfect weather. Again, a perfect team effort let us finish in a new record time of about 4.5 hours later when Alex, DG8MA, arrived. The rest of the DK0CG namely Wolfgang, DJ7AT, and Thomas, DL3NCS, arrived late morning on Saturday and brought some more gear. So, we set up a second mast with 2-by-9 elements. The later has been refurbished by Thomas, DL3NCS, and can easily be erected now. Well Done! Surprisingly, Thomas, DL3NGN, was able to join as well.

The contest has been run under the call DK0CG in order to help to defend the forth place in the German Contest Trophy.

This time the two transceiver setup worked we unsuccessfully tried in this years VHF contest. Thus, the receiving signal has been split and fed into our K3 and K2, respectively. The transmitting signal from both of the transceivers has been routed via mechanical switch allowing just one signal to enter the transverter. This additional support played pretty well. The additional and sometimes different receiving capabilities of the K2 helped a lot by pulling weak stations out of the noise and 2 operators are a bit quicker when searching the band.

The contest itself started as usual with reasonable rates. No special enhanced conditions have been observed. Activity, seemed fair in all directions but to the north due to the good weather I suppose. However, 2 times SM and 2 times OZ is quite frustrating. Especially, considering the fact that this is where it works best from our location. On the contrary, we worked 4 times YU which is quite good for our QTH. Signals have been in general stronger with less QSB than in September. Nevertheless, there have been a few very weak once. It took sometimes several attempts to get all the data. Thanks, for all the patience. We appreciate the effort.

The only drawback of the operating has been a constant clicking QRM by DL0XM about 20km away from us. We know it is not our setup since we don’t have QRM from other strong stations nearby like DM5D. We have to talk to them in order to fix that problem. It has been most likely costing us a fair number of very weak QSOs.

The overall result gives us a new record in QSOs and points. This is most likely the result of using 8-by-6-elements now even in November and the fact that the station run without any technical problem during the entire contest period. Thanks again Stefan, DL9GRE, for repairing the 2nd power amplifier. So far, we are pretty satisfied with the result. However, lets see how our opponents namely DM7A and DF0MU did. We can’t compete with the location of the first and the antenna setup of the second…

Taking down the antenna has been done pretty quick and we left the hill by 5pm arriving at home about half an hour later.

The fair number of operators allowed for a lot of socializing around our small camp fire. So, there have been a lot of discussions about going “On Air” together during the next contest season. So, see you all next year!

It has been an outstanding weekend with our guest operators and we will be glad if one day the guys would like to join us for some more operating, technical discussions, food and drinks…

See also the report of DK0CG by Thomas, DL3NCS.

Preliminary Result:

Call: DK0CG, JO61JF

Operator: DG8AM, DJ7AT, DK3WE, DL2LSM, DL3NCS, DL3NGN, DL5YYM

Rig: K3 + TR144H+40 + Mosfet PA 750W
Antenna: 8x6el + 2x9el, 20m high, 220m asl

    #QSOs: 464
   Points: 160569
  Average: 348km
      ODX: 982km  (LA0BY - JO59IX)
Countries: 22
                   9A:  11x  ( 7881)
                   DL: 224x  (51575)
                   E7:   1x  (  788)
                    F:   9x  ( 5618)
                    G:   2x  ( 1632)
                   HA:  16x  ( 9695)
                  HB9:   7x  ( 4023)
                    I:   8x  ( 6520)
                   LA:   1x  (  982)
                   LY:   1x  (  793)
                   OE:   6x  ( 2358)
                   OK:  91x  (23174)
                   OM:  29x  (14751)
                   ON:   5x  ( 3102)
                   OZ:   2x  (  972)
                   PA:   9x  ( 4731)
                   S5:  12x  ( 6941)
                   SM:   2x  ( 1139)
                   SP:  21x  ( 8808)
                  UA2:   2x  ( 1288)
                   UR:   2x  ( 1549)
                   YU:   4x  ( 3640)
Fields: 86
                         JO59

                                   JO77

                              JO65                     KO15
                    JO44 JO54 JO64           JO94 KO04
               JO33 JO43 JO53      JO73      JO93
JO02      JO22 JO32 JO42 JO52 JO62 JO72           KO02
JO01 JO11 JO21 JO31 JO41 JO51 <..> JO71 JO81 JO91      KO11
     JO10 JO20 JO30 JO40 JO50 JO60 JO70 JO80 JO90
----------------------------------------------------------------
     JN19 JN29 JN39 JN49 JN59 JN69 JN79 JN89 JN99 KN09 KN19 KN29
               JN38 JN48 JN58 JN68 JN78 JN88 JN98 KN08 KN18
          JN27 JN37 JN47 JN57 JN67      JN87 JN97 
               JN36                JN76 JN86      KN06 
                         JN55 JN65 JN75 JN85 JN95 KN05
               JN34      JN54 JN64      JN84 JN94 KN04
                              JN63

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