Category - DX & Contesting

Good Afternoon from a pub in Cork,

This weekend I was fortunate enough to have operated at EI7M in Ireland. I have never been to this station, or even operated a contest from EI until now and I was pleasantly surprised at the results.

IMAGE: EI3KD

I flew, Birmingham to Cork on Thursday before the contest. Flying Ryanair is always interesting, in that after standing in a “holding area” for an hour after the departure time the plane had only just arrived. Eventually I landed in Cork where Dave EI9FBB was able to pick me up and host me at his place overnight. The next morning I was off to EI7M.

When I arrived I had a brief introduction to the station and I was away. Pre-contest I made around 350 QSO’s as EI/M0SDV on HF, but to my surprise there was a great 6m opening where I made about 100 QSO’s around Europe. I even dabbled with a bit of FT8 and worked USA, which is a 6m first for me.

Into the contest, Pile ups were great however rate not all that high. There was QSB present all weekend which somewhat hampered any ability to work quickly as by the time I was receiving 5NN, a lot of station dropped into the noise for the serial. Nevertheless, it was great fun to be able to run a reasonable rate. I have commented to a number of people how well JA were coming through. 15m Opened up for most of the day and I was able to run loads of JA’s which is something I’ve never done in this part of the world before.

W’s were in an out throughout the contest.

I have to say I was disappointed with the performance of 10m throughout. Signals were not loud nor was there any rate. Obviously 15m was where the action was. I have theorized that due to the decent conditions all round, people were picking their band and staying, opposed to moving around.

All in, a great contest experience. My score, is higher than the current EI SO record for this contest, However I suspect that after adjudication I will have fallen short of the required amount for that record. I have however set an new record for the “Youth” category.

Call: EI7M
Operator(s): MØSDV
Station: EI7M

Class: SOAB HP
Class Overlay: Youth
QTH: IO51VW
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Location: Northern Europe

Normally I would operate in CQWW SSB as part of a large Multi-Multi team at M6T in Suffolk. Unfortunately, due to obvious reasons the team did not gather at the station this year for a M/M entry. The station was no in use so I was able to use it to do my first competitive CQWW SSB single operator entry. I decided that I would do Single op all band, assisted. I had online university lessons to do before and after the contest so I didn’t want to exhaust myself by doing unassisted and ultimately spending more time in the chair.

Before the contest that was a solar disturbance, which gave poor propogation predictions for the weekend. However from the start of the contest I found conditions to be quite good. Low bands were open nicely to North America and I was able to keep up a good rate through the first night. Throughout the day time’s I took advantage of big antennas on 20m and good conditions on the high bands.

To my surprise, 10m opened well into North America where I was able to get the Zone 4 multiplier. 15m Was also booming and I was able to get my best rate of the contest on Sunday, where I ran a 244 Q/hr rate for 1 hour, all to North America.

I finished the contest having operated only 36 of the 48 hours available with a score I am pleased with. 

The station set up: – Elecraft K3 + Amplifier

160m Dipole @30m

80m Foursquare

40m: 2 ele @ 30m

20m: 4ele @ 30m and Skyhawk Tribander @ 25m

15/10m: Skyhawk tribander @ 25m

The final result:

Today I received some communication from the 9J2LA team. Whilst I am not working with this team, I know many of the operators and I wish them a huge success and Safe trip to Zambia in March.

“Some good news have to be shared today. After an endless long process to get our Zambian license we are finally there. A big thanks to Mario 9J2MYT (IK1MYT) and Brian 9J2BO in Lusaka who helped us achieving this important goal. The license has been received just before the weekend. We are concentrating on our “boy scout trip” now. Our QTH in Zambia is secured, bus transportation from Lusaka airport to the lodge is booked and flight tickets are purchased. We are still working on customs clearance details, but we hope that we have it sorted out soon. We will leave Oslo the 4th of March at 18:45 with a scheduled arrival at Lusaka airport the day after at 12:30 local time. Let’s hope that the customs clearance will go smooth and don’t make too much of a headache … however, you never know. The bus ride to the QTH is short of 2 hours, depending on traffic.

Furthermore there is an ongoing power shedding through the whole country right now as it has been over the last few months. The reason is that the country has some issues with one of the main power electricity generators. According to our last conversation with the lodge owner, they suffer 4 hours of power cut each evening. For this reason, we are also in the process of purchasing a portable electricity generator as a backup. The rainy season that comes late this year, has been rather dry as well.

 

Stay tuned for more updates coming up soon!

73 de Rune LA7THA
9J2LA team leader”

M0SDV operating 2BSIQ as G9Y. Images screen shot from video

This year I was looking for a station and lucky for me Mark M0DXR said he would be in the US at K3LR and told me to speak to Chris G0DWV. Chris said he was happy to host me and we started talking about plans. Being the biggest and best contest of the year I wanted to do a reasonable entry. I decided it would be good to do SO2R. This has been the first contest that I’ve properly used SO2R and I’m happy to report that there were no horrible errors on my part. 

Into the contest it’s self, The first night on the low bands was incredible. Rate was high and mults were plentiful. I actually managed the first 1000 QSO’s by 1 hour after Sun rise. That’s good going! After sun rise is where conditions flipped. 20m was disappointing, rate was slow so I decided to use this to have a go at Dual CQing on both 20 and 15m. I learned a few things here. The main one being, If you’re going to dual CQ, the CQ its self needs to be short and fast. I settled for “CQ G9Y TEST” at 34 wpm. This seemed to be just right for interleaving QSO’s. With another night shift coming in, I decided to work the Sunset DX on the low bands, YB, VK, ZL mults, along with far east Russia (Zone 18) and some South East Asian countries. After this I went to be for a few hours waking with enough times to fill in 80/160 Q’s which I thought were a bit down on what they should be. 

The second day was much better. I worked the missing Europeans from the day before and started to focus on chasing more elusive mults. This in its self was challenging. Most of the contest I have done this year have been RUN RUN RUN, “Rate is King, the mults will find you”, but this contest needs a bit more strategy. So using the second radio as much as I could I would Pause the run on 20 and CQ on 15 whilst searching for Mults, and vise versa. This resulted in me worked some of what I needed (albeit not all). The 2nd radio also let me keep an eye on 10m, which did have a short opening to Africa bagging me V55A, ZD7W and some ZS stations. All Multipliers of course being some of only 7 Q’s on the band.

This contest was super fun! I had to learn things about contesting that I never thought I’d do. Reflecting, I needed to spend more time in S&P mode looking for the multipliers and less time trying to make a load of 1 point QSO’s. I also needed to better plan my off time. This caused me to loose some 160m QSO’s. It seems Experience trumps Youth in the case. Well done to Nick FAL who appears to have beaten me (By 90k Points) It’s Close! 

Thank you to Chris G0DWV and his YL Tina for being incredible hosts and making me feel welcome yet again!

Call: G9Y
Operator(s): MØSDV
Station: GØDWV

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Norfolk
Operating Time (hrs): 40.5
Location: Northern Europe
Radios: SO2R  

All logs for the 2019 activation of MS0INT from IOTA EU-112 have been uploaded to Clublog and OQRS is now open.

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 operating team will be; Philipp DK6SP, Tamas HA8RT, Florian OE3FTA & Horia YO3IMD

                                                                      They have 3 sponsors

I will provide a full QSL service for this DXpedition using OQRS and Club log. Please see the QSL Instructions or Cluck Here to visit the QRZ page

The QSL work for Brand New IOTA AF-111 DXpedition EL2EL/4 is under way. The QSL card has been designed and is currently being printed by Top Quality printer Max ON5UR. This design was initially published by DXworld on Social Media. 

One of the biggest aims of this DXpedition was to raise money for the MAF (Mission Aviation Foundation) and The locals of Liberia. This was done with a just giving page and OQRS donations. With £2000 raised before the DXpedition and ever increasing donations being made with QSL requests Via OQRS and direct letters. An Incredible effort! 

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.

I Hope for All direct requests to be in the post within the next 10-14 days, LoTW has been uploaded. In the meantime there is plenty of DX to work whilst you wait.