May 2007 UHF Contest
An eventful contest with a few equipment failures to contend with. 1.3GHz would occasionally take off on TX for some reason, 2.3GHz failed overnight with a masthead relay problem, and 3.4GHz didn't work through most of Saturday but was OK Sunday. On the other hand the Elecraft K3 used as exciter for 1.3GHz for the first time performed very well. Conditions started out fairly flat, then a North Sea coastal duct formed with the nearer PA's very loud on all bands. This extended further into PA as the evening progressed. The following morning the ducting extended to Denmark, Western Sweden and Norway, but activity was light with just a few DX contacts made. 432MHz sounded very flat when I went on there later on Sunday morning. Aircraft reflection provided some good DX with the bigger stations on 1.3GHz. Band highlights were as follows:
432MHz - DF0YY in JO62 was the best DX at 774km, other DX included DK6AJ/P (JO52), DJ9KH/P, DJ3HW (JO42) and DK2OY/P (JO40).
1.3GHz - SM6AFV in JO67 at 956km by tropo, plus a group of aircraft reflection QSOs over 750km with SK7MW (JO65), OK2KKW (JO60), DM7A (JO60), DF0MTL (JO61), DF0YY (JO62)
2.3GHz - Nothing very spectacular, it is a pity it stopped working as SM6AFV was 59+20dB for a short while on Sunday morning!
3.4GHz - Bias Tee failed on Saturday, a temporary fix got it back on the air late in the evening, but a number of potential contacts were missed as a result.
5.7GHz - Worked well this time, with nice DX to SM6AFV and OZ1CTZ (JO46) in the Sunday morning tropo.
10GHz - A reasonable number of contacts and nice DX with OZ, just missed completing with SM6AFV as conditions faded. No DL's this time, conditions that way seemed poor.
Results are summarised in the table below:
|
Band (MHz) |
QSOs |
Claimed Score |
Best DX |
Locator |
Distance (km) |
|
432 |
27 |
9537 |
DF0YY |
JO62GD |
774 |
|
1296 |
59 |
22606 |
SM6AFV |
JO67GQ |
956 |
|
2320 |
16 |
4056 |
DL0V |
JO32PC |
416 |
|
3400 |
8 |
2084 |
PI4GN |
JO33II |
398 |
|
5760 |
13 |
4342 |
SM6AFV |
JO67GQ |
956 |
|
10368 |
22 |
5676 |
OZ1CTZ |
JO46OE |
694 |
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