Report on the SARL QRP contest held on 24 January 2015
Today was the summer leg of the annual SARL QRP contest. I decided to run a
ultra light, portable station again. Last year I went to a local nature
reserve, I decided to do the same again just changing my antenna. The antenna
I used last year was an end-fed dipole but it proved to be noisy and less than
efficient. But even with this antenna I managed to win so I had a standard to
keep up!
The decision was to run a 2 band, fan dipole this time for 40
and 15m since those were the most productive bands last year. The radio was
again the FT-817 powered by 4S 6000mAh LiPo batteries. I added a battery
monitor this time to keep an eye on the batteries. I also added a 10V
regulator this time as the more than 16V from a fully charged 4S pack is a bit
high for the FT-817. Last year I just chucked the antenna into some trees but
I decided to take a portable, ex-military, mast this time. It worked well but
was rather heavy to carry for the 2km there and 2km back hike to my operating
spot under the trees.
Yaesu FT-817 with LDG Z-11Pro II tuner and power
supply
Fan-dipole on ex-military mast above the trees.
The first hour of the 3 hour contest is limited to 40m forcing stations
to work locals. I managed to work 26 local stations, all but one on SSB. Part
of the reason for this was that I forgot my CW key at home so I had to key the
radio via the UP/DOWN buttons on the mike, how stupid can you get?
Once
the first hour was over I moved to 15m, unfortunately there was a French
contest running so very few non French stations were prepared to work me, they
were all looking for French contacts. The result was around 24 DX CW contacts,
most of them with French stations. In total I managed to work 10 DXCC counties
including a nice surprise, a JY9 right at the end for a new QRP DXCC entity.
My score was better than last year but I am sure the other guys also did
better, I will have to wait and see how I did.....
Update 16/02/1025: The
results have been released.
The results of the QRP contest held on
the 24th Jan 2015 are as follows. 10 logs were received which included 2 check
logs.
1st - ZS6DX - Rudi Venter - 1911 points (Ultra light
category)
2nd - ZS6WR - West Rand ARC - 408 points
3rd - ZS6TVB
- Theo Bresler - 245 points
4th - ZS2EC - Theunis Potgieter - 120 points
5th - ZS6BV - Brian Jones - 72 points
6th - ZS6BNE - Eddie Leighton - 60
points (Ultra light category)
ZS4BS - Dennis Green - 60 points
8th -
ZS6JHG - Jan Gelderblom - 8 points
Check logs received from ZS6PTA and
ZS6MSW
My strategy of working mostly DX seems to work! I can also say
that my "new" field antenna works a lot better than my old one.