How did I get involved?
It all started with a few emails to Erik ON5AI who eventually asked me if I would like to join the team of OT8A for the coming CQ WW SSB contest from their station at Lier outside Antwerp.
I was then speaking to my good friend Gernot - DF5RF and he said he would also be interested joining this little party...
So, we set about making plans to attend this little contest station - we had a look at their website and decide that the station was really no so 'little' after all. In fact, it was HUGE and very professionally put together, as the photographs show it was amazing, I have operated many contest stations over the past 17 years but had never seen such a site. Many hours of hard work and technology go into a station such as this, and I take my hat off the all of them - it is no wonder that they always seem to come in the top 10 in the world and in the top 5 in Europe.
The Operating Schedule
A bit to our disappointment we seemed to have been chosen to operate some of the quietest times on 80 Metres (a band in which we both have considerable experience)
I guess they were just trying us out to see how well we performed...
� All times are UTC
Start - End Operator Logger
0000 - 0200 ON5AI ON4CET
0200 - 0400 ON4CET ON5AI
0400 - 0600 ON5UM DF3TJ
0600 - 0800 DF3TJ ON5UM
0800 - 1000 ON4CCM ON4CHO
1000 - 1200 ON4CHO ON4CCM
1200 - 1400 DF5RF G0BZF
1400 - 1600 G0BZF DF5RF
1600 - 1800 ON5AI ON4CET
1800 - 2000 ON5UM DF3TJ
2000 - 2200 ON5UM ON5AI
2200 - 2400 G0BZF DF5RF
2400 - 0200 DF5RF G0BZF
0200 - 0400 ON4CHO ON5AI
0400 - 0600 ON5AI DF3TJ
0600 - 0800 DF3TJ ON5AI
0800 - 1000 ON4CCM ON4CHO
1000 - 1200 ON4CHO ON4CCM
1200 - 1400 ON5UM DF3TJ
1400 - 1600 DF3TJ ON5UM
1600 - 1800 ON4CET ON5AI
1800 - 2000 ON5AI ON4CET
2000 - 2200 DF3TJ ON5UM
2200 - 2400 ON5UM DF3TJ
--
Despite being given these time slots - I think we performed admirably and the proof is that they have asked us back for another contest.
The first 4 hours (2 with Gernot operating and 2 with me operating) were very interesting, though we did suffer from some QRM problems from the other stations on the site.
In order to allow the other stations on the HF bands to work better during the daylight hours, we were restricted to 50% power, but this was reversed during the hours of darkness.
So we made full use of the Power available to clock up the score on 80M.
So, how did we do?
In total, bearing in mind we only worked for 8 hours in total, we logged approximately 350 stations between the two of us.
During the afternoon it was quite active with European stations calling us all the time, however our evening stint was only good for the first hour
(remember that 22:00 GMT is 00:00 in Central European Time (CET)) and the best DX was coming from the far side of Russia and also the United States.
So, we finished our operating at 04:00 GMT which was actually 06:00 to us, but only 05:00 according to the clock, as this was the weekend that the clocks were turned back from summer time to
'normal' CET. We decide to sit and chat with some of the other operators for a while - drink some coffee and then take the car back to my QTH in the Netherlands.
The roads were quiet and all sensible people were in bed sleeping but we had an hour drive before we could sleep - though Gernot only made it as far as the front seat of the car before nodding off
to dream of that one that got away... I'm sure I heard him shouting 'Oscar Tango eight Alpha' while he was dreaming...
The final scores for the OT8A team have not been confirmed yet, but you can check their website for the claimed scores.
Our thanks...
Thanks have to go to all the people who manage and keep the site running for 48 hours, to all the operators who were so much fun to talk to between our shifts and to ON5AI for allowing us the opportunity to enjoy
and operate the contest station of ON7LR - the one, the only OT8A.