DK3WE Personal Site
My u2R from microHam has been working flawlessly for a couple of contests now. Unfortunately, it is recommended to be operated from an isolated power supply in order to prevent ground loops. I have been using some bricolage solution for a while now. It is not clear why there is no solution originally directly on the board.
Operating SSB during times of low solar activity is not much fun. However, I took the challenge again and eventually lost the mood to go on to the bitter end.
The results of the IARU HF World Championship 2015 have been published by the ARRL. I’m World Champion in the new Single Operator Unlimited QRP class. Read the rest of this entry »
Declining conditions on the high bands due to the solar cycle have the effect of DX signal levels becoming weaker and openings becoming shorter in general. Thus, operating QRP becomes harder in two ways. The time window to work a certain DX station becomes shorter, i.e. there is more competition from high power stations. Additionally, less bands will be open and stations will concentrate on the ones open. Thus, increasing the competition even further. The result is supposedly much less DX stations and multipliers worked.
So, exactly this happened over the weekend. The final result — 1.7 compared to 2.4 million points last — is down by about one third despite having worked almost as many stations.
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.
John, W2GD wrote: ‘The other thing you learn operating LP or QRP is you must have perfect timing to overcome the ‘brute force’ advantage of your KW brothers. Sounds simplistic, but this has a huge impact on how well you do breaking pileups. It is a learned skill that takes practice to master.’ Well, he is pretty right. Almost all of the time during this contest I had to operate using the voice recorder of my K3 due to having lost my voice. This hampered the score quite a bit not only because the timing hasn’t been right but also responding to specific questions has been quite a challenge. Additionally, calling CQ myself has been out of question. Last but not least, operating having fever is not much fun…
Unfortunately, family obligations prevented me from putting in a full effort. So, I just operated about two hours from the DL0BMW club station.
My old u2R from microHam suffered from low quality solder joints. I have been receiving a new u2R unit about after two weeks I sent the old one back. Read the rest of this entry »
Eventually, the certificate for the IARU HF World Championship 2014 arrived. Now, I can call myself officially a ‘World Champion’.
Just a few QSOs over the weekend and collecting a few QTCs. T32AZ (Eastern Kiribati) has been the highlight on Sunday morning.