In this contest I was fortunate enough to be allowed use of G0DWV, Chris’s station in Norfolk. Here I decided to do SOAB HP, Unassisted.
The first hour or so of the contest i was mostly on 40m with some cracking rates. Around 170Q/h was average for the first two hours. and when it slowed down I QSY’d to 80 and so on. 80m was fun! I didn’t expect quite so many loud signals. Pile ups were just as lively as on 40m which was new for me to experience. I spent a large part of the night hopping between 80. & 160 for mults but 40 turned out to be the money band. I was surprised at how many Mid – West coast Stations called, contrary to what others have said.
I did manage to get some sleep in the mornings between sort of 9am-11:30. Not much but just enough to be refreshed. I started on 20m again and shortly after had a listen on the 2nd VFO to see if 15m was playing ball (various social media posts the day’s leading up suggested it may open for the contest). and as it goes the band was somewhat open. I made about 80 QSO’s and worked 25 S/P’s before heading back to 20, hungry for some higher rate.
The 2nd day was much the same although I found 15m had much better conditions than Saturday. Maybe people had missed the opening the first time?? Anyway I made a few more Q’s there before going back to 20m, However this time it was somewhat quieter than I’d wanted. I worked 2-300 more Q’s before the band died at about 19:00z 40m Opened early on Sunday, I was worked Q’s as far as IL and OH from 20:00z (This is where Chris’s 4 ele comes in handy) and this good rate continued pretty much to the end. I did hop around 160/80 too and mopped up some last minute mults, But again 40m offered almost constant pile ups to the end.
A huge Thank you to Chris G0DWV and his wife Tina for being my hosts for the weekend and making my time there very enjoyable.
Station:
Radios: Icom IC 7851 + Expert 2KFA + Microham MK2R+
Antennas: 160m top loaded Vertical, 80m four square, 4 elements 40m & C31XR
Wintest Logging
BAND QSO S/P DUP POINTS AVG
———————————-
160 147 36 0 438 2.98
80 496 50 22 1485 2.99
40 800 53 20 2397 3.00
20 972 59 33 2913 3.00
15 234 37 2 702 3.00
10 0 0 0 0 0.00
———————————-
TOTAL 2649 235 77 7935 3.00
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TOTAL SCORE : 1 864 725
A team of four Young, Enthusiastic and talented operators all under the age of 26 will embark on an adventure to a top 50 DXCC entity, Kosovo. They will be QRV from the 10th December for 12 days. They will operate 160-10m SSB, CW and Data including FT8 Fox & Hound mode.
The team made almost 5000 QSO’s from the Brand New IOTA, So far we have had 500 QSL requests using QORS and less than 20 Direct letters. This is a very good outcome and a great for success for OQRS which is growing in popularity each and every year.
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.
This week Many Youngsters from around the IARU region 1 will be heading down to South Africa for a week of Radio fun!
