The story of our 3rd expedition to EU-146

Intro

Our main goal was to make a better score than last year,and end in the top 5 worldwide....

Front story

It began not earlier than end June that the thoughts came for another effort to participate in the IOTA contest as PI4HQ in our 3rd year.
A majer problem came up.Our original planned QTH in Stellendam was taken by a scoutsgroup so we had to find for another QTH.
We had some contacts with our friend Juergen (ON4BN) who came alot in these regions in the past and knew some local folks.
He knew a guy on the Island of "Schouwen - Duivelland ",one of the islands that counts as EU-146.He had a camping place with a barn
and 400V of electricity to our disposal.Our presider Anton (ON6NL) and Juergen (ON4BN) drove of one week-end and saw it was great!
There was an open field near the camping place that could be used for our plannings.It was about 1 or 2 acers long but only 50 meters
wide.It was directly behind the beach with some dunes in between.We could sleep in the barn and have 3 seperate fases to feed our site.

We had 2 mobile towers from about 16 meters high.Two tents (one for the run,and one for the multiplier station).
2 triband beams.3 long power cables that could support every shack,long peaces of RG-213 coax,rotor cable,dipoles,1 mini tent
for the Kitchen and many many other small stuff supported by the team of Lier (ON4CFQ,ON6LK and last but not least ON5UM).

We came to the site on Thursday.Yes thats right, 2 days before the beginning of the contest ! We knew from ealier operations that we needed
time to build our stations.

1 st day (Thursday)

The team of Lier arrived earlier than the team of North Limburg.It was late when we arrived (The North Limburg team),so we first
did some sightseen.Anton (ON6NL) was right,it was indeed a lovely site to operate from.We knew that we could manage the
maximum distance between the 2 stations (about 100 meters).That would be enough to eliminate the interference between the 2 stations.
We drunk some beers and went to bed because we had a long day ahead !!

2 nd day (Friday)

We started early in setting up the tents for our 2 stations.The 2 mobile towers were moved to it's possition and the power cabels were
attached to the boxes (great job by Lier !!)
We first assembled the Hygain beam and placed the rotor.The rotory dipole for 40m had to be placed first on the boom before
putting the tower verticaly up.It was not that windy that day,but the forcast wasn't good,so we had to be sure to crank up the towers
with steel cables.The tower had to lifted by rotating a spindle.We tested the rotor and it worked....checked the SWR of the beam and
the rotory dipole for 40m and that looked fine.Meanwhile,Filip (ON1AFN) hooked up the packetlink on 70cm.We made contact
with some local folks to link us with a gate to the internet,but that took more time than was expected...
The second tower with the 3 element tribander by Fritzel was up in less time than the first tower.We still hadden figured out where our
second tent was to be placed.Finaly we had an agreement between the operators.

So the the second day was almost finished and everything went smoothly...The only thing to be done was setting up the stations to there
final possition and test the connection between the two shacks...Ohh..no...link !!
We had to make sure the link worked,because if the logs were not togheter ,they had to be syncronised afterworths with alot of work,and
illegal numbering.There was a UTP cable of about 100m long attached between the 2 stations,so that could be the problem.Normaly
a UTP network only works to a distace of 100meters,so we had our limits here...
With a closer look on the RJ-45 plugs,we saw that the copper pins that penetrate the wires,were not deep enough.Ofcourse we had
no pincers to penetrate deeper.But we found a sollution by using a small srewdriver,and a hamer.And voila! Our link was established !!
Some operators made some QSO's and saw that it worked great !!The only thing to be done that day was setting up a dipole for 80 m.
Jim (ON5UM) wanted to use the 2 towers for stinging up the dipole.We were distrusting of that idea,because of the langedistance
between the 2 towers,but it looked just fine when it was hooked up.(Thanks Jim for persisting in your idea).

Our kichen did a great job that day by making us a delicious dinner.A great performance was done that day
We went to bed early that day because tomorrow was D-day !!

1st day of the contest

We saw that the wind was increasing and that the large TH6DXX beam didn't turn in the right direction.It always turned in favor of the wind.
It was to late to pull down the beam and install another rotor.
5-4-3-2-1 Goooo! Our first QSO's were logged!Rates were up to 250.Conditions looked not as good as last year but we managed to
work on the higher bands.Only 10meters was a problem due to the conditions.We all sticked to the schedule so everyone had as much
as possible operating time.We had the luxury of two operaters a shack,so that one can check the other.
At nighttime 80m didn't perform as well as predicted,because we had no vertical.

2nd day of the contest

In the early morning we did some more antenna work.A dipole for 20m,hanging low for European traffic and a delta loop for 80m.
The dipole for 20m did a great job,because of the low noice receive,the delta loop for 80m didn't perform that well as expected.
The contest went to it's end.We saw that we missed alot of multipliers and would reflect on our result...
An interesting occurrence we had while breakin off the rotor of the TH6DXX antenna: IT WAS MOUNTED UP-SIDE-DOWN !!
That's why it couldn't be controled anymore.....hihi.....
Never the less we had a great time on Schouwen - Duivelland land and we sertainly do it over again next year.

Score

We endend on the 8th place this year.Here the standings of the top 10 for this year.We competed in the Multi-Opr High power class:

Here somewhat closer look at our scoreboard:

This gives a result of 5.663.376 Points (THIS IS A CLAIMED SCORE)

QSL Info

QSL goes Via: PA3CAL.

Special thanks

Thanks to the VERON,and especially PB2T (Hans) for borrowing us the call PI4HQ and handeling the QSL cards!!
Also special thanks to Huub for letting us use the wonderfull QTH for our 2 days operation....
All the operaters and visitors for the fine job they did for this unforgettable week-end
The great cooking by ON6LK,ON4CFQ,ON4TTT,ON1AFN and La-mama