Back to the "same old" conditions - flat! Tropo was non existent this time. There was some useful rain scatter enhancement on medium range signals on Saturday evening, but no real DX. All the DX was worked by aircraft scatter, with AS contacts on all bands apart from 10GHz.

70cm is a low priority in this contest, mainly used on Sunday when the pace has dropped a bit, nevertheless it did produce some nice 800km plus contacts with OK2A, DK2A, and SK7MW.

23cm is the main focus with plenty of aircraft scatter DX worked. Amongst the best were SK7MW, DH0LS, OK2A, DM5D, F6KNB, DH5YM and DG6QF all over 800km, with DF4IAO, DK0NA and DL4NFA over the 700km mark.

13cm seemed to be working well, with good signal levels from some stations that were not very strong on 23cm. I tried a couple of tests with OL4A (JO60) on the Sunday and we exchanged signals on both occasions, but not enough to make a complete contact. Otherwise the best was DL0GTH, with other over 500km contacts with DL3IAS, DR9A, and OZ1FF.

On 9cm I completed contacts with all the stations I tried with, but activity was not great. Again DL0GTH was the best DX, with other good distances worked with DL3IAS and DF0MU.

6cm seemed to be working well, again results are limited by the number of stations available on the band. Once again DL0GTH was the best DX, with all the DL0GTH QSOs from 23cm to 6cm using a single plane that travelled directly along the path between us over a period of about 10 minutes.

3cm seems to be more difficult than it should be, with transmitted reports often below those received. More work on the system is needed to improve performance. Aircraft scatter signals were heard from DL0GTH and DR9A, but not enough to make a contact. F6DKW is usually a reliable contact, but it didn't work when we tried near the end of the contest. Best DX was Horst DK1VC at 440km, with a few other DL/PA stations worked around the 400km mark.

73

John G3XDY

Results: