CQWW 2001 SSB:
OH0A & OH0V CQWW 2001 SSB by OH4XX
This was my second trip to Aaland island ( 1st
one SAC 99 as OH0V M/M). Jukka,
OH6Li asked month before the contest if I was intrested in to operate
10 meter single. I was not sure if my work schedule would allow it, but
less than two weeks before the contest I informed Jukka that why not, lets
do it! Jukka had planned to be at 15 single and in order to do that he
would have need to prepare antennas HW for that. Jukka had about week to
go and he started to prepare antennas. Anyhow we end up to island thursday
night and we had about one day to put up three four element 15 meter
yagis to 24 m crank up tower. We started to work with antennas on Friday
morning, WX was excelent for that job. Start was good and everything seems
to be right on schedule, however as you know if things can go wrong they
will and same happen this time as well. First 4 element yagi went up ok,
but second would be in side mount and there we end up in trouble or actually
you can call it misscalcualtion, after everything were were installed we
discovered that sidemount was too high, feedline was too low and there
was no change to turn antenna without having conflict with guywires. It
was already late afternoon and we had to lower side mount abt. 1 meter
and pull the feedline few meters higher (very think and heavy calbe). Sun
set at OH0 is aroud 15Z but fortunately I had took two halogen lamps with
me.. So antenna work continued =). After we finished antenna work there
was still issues left. Everything supposed to be ready but few more surprices;
antenna analyser showed huge SWR when we connect the cable in shack,there
was a shortcut somewhere in cable , luckily JUkka had another cable as
a spare so he prepared that one and climbed to tower to fix it. All three
antennas were coupled to Stack match but of course it did not work due
to wrong wiring. Troubleshooting took a while but eventually got that fixed.Finally
we had antenna work done but we were way behind our schedule. We should
have finished antenna work around 7 PM but it was 1 AM next day and contest
would start at 3 AM local time. We were exhausted and decide to skip contest
start because we would have been slleping at then end. Supposely taking
a nap at this point was a mistake, at least for Jukka since rumours told
after contest that both 10 and 15 meters were wide open to NA in
the begining of the contest. We took few hour nap and started contesting
around 04Z. Due to previous day hard tower/ antenna work my muscles very
sore and I had a huge headache. Anyhow we were ready to go; Jukka on 15
meters as OH0V and me as OH0A,Geta berg was on the air! After slow start
JA's start to come in and actually my best hour was 190 Q 8Z saturday morning.
Saturday was very productive over all and at the end of the day aroud 22Z
when band closed I had over 1800 Q's logged. I took a long nap and at 6:30Z
Sunday morning I started again. Band was not in same condition anymore
and I could not get good runs. I focused to find multipliers and managed
pretty well with that however I never could break Zone 34 pileups (5A or
SU). There was a short opening to NA in the afternoon and I could get around
100 NA station in log. Rest of the contest was just CQing and S&P,
only few Q's in last hours. So at the end I had 2500 Q and 190 mults, it
is not too bad but without issues we had it could have been higher (you
have to have station ready early enough in order to have some rest,you
know..) There is always things what you can improve. Well.. NEXT
time, right?
Special thanks to Jukka OH6Li letting me use his nice station and thanks
to OH0A club letting me use their club call. QSL's for OH0A goes to OH0AA
club.Thanks all who called me, we sure hope to meet again!
CQ WPX 2002 SSB:
Mikko,
OH4XX (OH0A, SOSB 10m) and Jukka, OH6LI (OH0V SOSB 15m ) were Geta
during CQ WPX 2002 SSB. Propagation was ruined due to aurora
and NA propagation was rather slim. OH0A claimed score is 1.8 Megs,
OH0V claim is ~ 4 megs
Scedule
for coming contests:
CQ
WPX 2002: ?
IARU:
SAC:
CQ
WW: