A great improvement over 2014 when the 23cm preamp failed. Apart from a logic error in the switchbox causing the 23cm system to go onto transmit whenever 13cm was selected, everything worked well this year.

The tropo conditions of the previous few days had not really favoured this part of the UK on the microwave bands, but the settled and calm weather did result in a slight tropo enhancement across the North Sea and improved signal levels within the UK during Saturday and the early part of Sunday. As usual aircraft reflections provided the best DX on all the bands up to and including 9cm.

Activity levels on 23cm seemed good on Saturday, I passed on some opportunites to try the higher bands to maximise the scores on 23cm and 13cm for the UK trophy contests. On the Sunday there was enough tropo to hear OK2A 1kHz higher than my usual working frequency (1296.214) during most of the morning, even when not beaming that way. This year there were several QSOs over 800km: DL5YWM/DG6QF/DL8UAT in JO61, OK2A in JO60, and SK7MW in JO65.

13cm was good this year, with the second largest number of QSOs and points I have recorded to date. All the DX was by aircraft scatter, but the tropo made most shorter distance contacts a lot quicker and easier to complete. Highlights on 9cm were the aircraft scatter contacts with DF0YY (JO62) and DL0GTH (JO50). 6cm seemed to be the Cinderella band this year, with rather fewer stations to work and only normal tropo distances achieved. Conditions on Sunday dropped away so PI4GN who are normally workable were inaudible. Activity on 3cm was better and more contacts might have been possible if I had not been so busy on other bands. Conditions within the UK were OK on Saturday but poor on Sunday. A test with DR9A (JN48) at 632km gave a positively identified aircraft reflection but it was too short/weak for a contact.

After spending a lot of time on renewing and upgrading all the cables and feeders on the tower, changing the feeds and adding elevation control for the dishes, it was good to find it was worthwhile in terms of results.

73

John G3XDY

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