Category - Blog

Back in March of this year I went on a trip to Bonaire along with good friend DK6SP. We spent around 2 weeks on the island in total. During this time we operated holiday style as PJ4/Homecall and we participated in CQ WPX SSB as PJ4V. Our Team for this contest was; DK6SP, M0SDV, PJ4DX, PJ4NX and PJ4KY.

We entered the Multi-Two category, High power. Using Equipment borrowed from the island residents and some of our own. The station consisted of 100% wire antennas. 

Antennas: 160m Inverted L, 80m Vertical, 40m elevated vertical and Inv V dipole, Spider beam @ 12m ,MW0JZE Hex beam @ 10m

Other Equipment: Yaesu FT 2000 with Acom 1500, Yaesu FTdx 5000 with Aplha 9500, Home brew filters and 6×2 switch by DJ8OG, Laptops x2

Our claimed Score was 5859 Q’s, 1252 Pfx and 27.9 Mil Points

Our Final adjudicated score was 5653 Q’s, 1235 Pfx and 26.18 Mil points, Leaving us 2nd World, 1st South America and 1st Bonaire. I feel the team worked very well together. This is the first time Multi-Two has been attempted with these guys and it was a pleasure to operate with them. We could not have hoped for such a good result. Only Bigger and Better for the future.

Today held the EU HFC contest. This is a 12 hour contest of high rates and all about proving who is the best. This contest is Single Operator Only and QSO’s are allowed only between European stations through out the entire contest. 

This year I entered All band, CW High power. Using my contest call sign M7K. So my thoughts. I had some slight equipment issues, meaning that I could not get full power output on 80 or 40m, and I had no antenna for 160. However 20-10m worked perfectly even getting a small opening on 10m for a few hours. I do not think I took full advantage of the 10m opening with such a little number of multipliers on that band.

For the first four hours of the contest I managed to hold a steady rate of 100 Q/h. It may sound like a lot but it leaves a lot of time just calling CQ. Then after four hours the rate started to slow some more. Making around 70 Q/h rate overall. I put this down to poor conditions and lack of activity. This contest is known for its high rates So you can imagine that I was surprised to be going so slow. 

In the end I decided to go QRT after 9 hours, deciding that the extra 3 hour wouldn’t affect my positioning a great deal. My results are posted below. Also see comments on 3030 Scores

Equipment:

Kenwood TS590 SG, Ameritron AL572 Amplifier @400W

Hex beam @12m,  40m dipole @15m , 80m 1/4 wave vertical, No 160m Antenna

With limited time left before my DXpedition to Bonaire for RDXC and WPX SSB I wanted to write a short update, and summaries all of my previous posts into one paragraph. So here goes…

DK6SP and I will be on Bonaire from 16/03/18 to 01/04/18, We will also visit one other DXCC in the caribbean (Stay tuned). We will enter RDXC with PJ4/call and CQ WPX as PJ4V. Our WPX team is DK6SP, M0SDV, PJ4DX, PJ4KY and PJ4NX. Out side of the contest QRV as PJ4/Calls on 160-6m CW, SSB and maybe FT8. During our non contest activity we will be running Live logs Via Clublog and Wintest. Live logs will appear on this website (See below). We will focus on CW and 30m in particular to give you all a new slot. Thanks to MW0JZE for letting us use his hex beam, DXcommander and Steve PJ4DX. QSL Via Home calls and PJ4V Via M0URX

Phew!

Almost didn’t make it.. 5 days 10 Hours, 28 minutes now! Can’t wait! See you all in the pile up

PJ4 Live log

This weekend saw me making another visit to the biggest contest station in England. We had planned to do a Multi 2 entry, but due to severe Weather here in the UK and the “Beast from the East” storm some of our ops couldn’t make it. In the end we had to do Multi Single with 3 ops. Our Team was Myself M0SDV, Dave G4BUO and Kieron M0HKB. 

We started out our contest on 40m. For this band we have at our disposal a 3 element full sized Yagi at 65ft high. Again, due to extreme weather we were unable to get the tower to 100ft and conditions were not in our favor.  At the beginning there was a reasonable rate of around 1 Q a minute. Whilst this isn’t bad, it isn’t as high as we’d have liked for a good low band score. After a band change to 80m things started to pick up a bit. but as the night progressed on it unexpectedly slowed down. And come mid morning the bands had died. Time for a break. 

During the morning quiet spell the weather was calm. This gave us chance to crank up the 40m beam to full height, and add a T vertical for 160m. Then 20m began to open. 

It started slow for the first hour or two, as expected as the band started to open. But come 13:00z we had rates of 143 QSO’s per hour. The grew through the afternoon to 188 QSO per hour. And this didn’t slow until after dark when the band died out. 

Another night on the low bands was very slow, however 80m held a nice size run of W’s at between 01:00z and 02:00z. But it was very slow for the rest of the night. The second day wasn’t much better either. However 15m did open for a little while bringing over 160 QSO’s. and 20m gave us some nice pile ups of up to 150 QSO’s per hour. 

The multupliers (Mults) in this contest are US States and Canadian Provinces. 

As shown in Worked mults to the left and the Summary below, the most Mults were on 20m. We worked 61 States/Provinces. Which is all of them except for Yukon and Northern Territory. The worst band was 160m with only 16 mults. This is expected considering the conditions.

Over all we made 3120 QSO’s with 189 Mults and a score of 1.76 Million. We found that with 3 ops Multi Single is quite enjoyable. Each person gets plenty of chair time (but not too much) and more importantly each operator gets plenty of sleep and is always ready o tale over on the radio should someone require it.

Thanks to our small Team for a good weekend, Those who stopped by to offer relief for an hour or two and a Huge Thanks to Brenda and Vernon at M6T for taking good care of us. Roll on the next contest!

Today it has been confirmed that I will be QSL manager for the DX-World.net teams Inaugural DXpedition. So far it has been confirmed that I will be managing TA0/MM0NDX and TA0/ON9CFG is also interested in using my service.

The team will be travelling to AS-201, Buyukada Island in Turkey from 7th – 11th May 2018. They will be QRV on 80 – 2m Holiday style, with the aim of having fun and working as many DX-World readers as possible.

If you are interested in using me as your QSL manager, for upcoming DXpeditions, Holiday style activations or if you live in a rare DXCC entity please click here or email Jamie@M0SDV.com