Antenna work & VHF May Contest

Finally I had some time to go visit the guys and our station again last weekend. A distance of 2 x 700 km means I need to take Friday and Monday off for traveling and that is rather luxery in QRL currently. But I could make it fit for the VHF May contest. 😎

As the weather was great we also used the chance to finally install our new big 6 m antenna (8 ele YU7EF design) which we bought from Greg, SP3RNZ, last year already and which he brought over and helped assembling it at our location (see Greg’s and Uwe’s blog entries, too). Unfortunately we didn’t manage to install it last year for several reasons but now it’s done and resting above the 15 m beam, thanks to Heiko’s climbing arts. 🙂

Performance seems to be great! We can hear the OZ7IGY beacon louder than ever before and have regular copy on the DB0HGW beacon which I could only hear once in the past during enhanced tropo conditions. So it seems to be a big improvement! 😎 Now waiting for the first big DX openings …

The VHF contest was about average with a tendency to below average. QSB was sever and we only had one QSO above 800 km which is very unusual (as well as no 9A in the log at all!). At least we managed > 400 QSOs again after quite some time although the kilometer average was well below what we’re normally used to …

Contest Report from DF0TEC in JO73CE at 144 MHz
===============================================

Contest : DARC-Mai-Contest 2018
Date    : 2018 May 05 to 2018 May 06
Section : 02 144 MHz Multi-OP
QTH     : Woltersdorf

Co-OPs  : DG1BHA;DH8BQA;DL3BQA;DM5DX

TX      : IC-7400 + PA, 750 W
RX      : IC-7400 + MGF1302
Antenna : 10 ele DK7ZB Yagi, 20 mAGL, 70 mASL
Log     : TACLog by OZ2M, 1,995, http://www.qsl.net/oz2m

QSOs    :  409
-invalid:    2                                       Points/QSO
-valid  :  407     QSO-points (*1) :    153496              377
WWLs    :   71     WWL bonus (0)   :         0                0
DXCCs   :   15     DXCC bonus (0)  :         0                0
                   ---------------------------           ------
                   Total score     :    153496              377

ODX     : S59DEM in JN75DS at 825 km

Worked World Wide Locators:
JN38:  1   JN76:  1   JO20:  2   JO50: 16   JO65:  5   JO83:  1   
JN39:  3   JN77:  2   JO21:  2   JO51: 19   JO67:  2   JO86:  1   
JN47:  4   JN78:  2   JO30:  6   JO52: 12   JO68:  1   JO90:  7   
JN48:  5   JN79: 10   JO31: 18   JO53:  7   JO70: 19   JO91:  2   
JN49: 15   JN86:  3   JO32:  6   JO54:  2   JO71: 13   JO92:  1   
JN57:  2   JN87:  1   JO33:  3   JO55:  2   JO72:  7   JO94:  2   
JN58: 10   JN88:  8   JO40:  9   JO59:  1   JO73:  7   JO97:  1   
JN59:  6   JN89:  8   JO41:  8   JO60: 17   JO74:  1   KN09:  2   
JN67:  1   JN97:  3   JO42:  8   JO61: 19   JO76:  1   KO00:  1   
JN68: 10   JN98:  2   JO43:  9   JO62: 27   JO80:  3   KO02:  1   
JN69:  9   JN99:  8   JO44:  1   JO63:  6   JO81:  4   KO13:  1   
JN75:  1   JO10:  1   JO46:  1   JO64:  5   JO82:  2   

Worked DXCCs:
DL : 265   HA :   5   OE :   8   ON :   3   PA :   5   SM :  10   
EU :   1   HB :   2   OK :  58   OZ :   4   S5 :   3   SP :  32   
F  :   2   LA :   1   OM :   8   

Top 10 QSO-points:
20180505 2330 S59DEM         59   228 59   398   JN75DS     825 
20180506 0259 S56K           599  258 599  122   JN76MC     790 
20180506 0444 LA0BY          55   273 55   001   JO59IX     785 
20180505 2216 HA1ZH          599  207 599  088   JN86LK     776 
20180506 0156 ON4KHG         579  247 599  114   JO10XO     759 
20180506 0559 F0CVO/P        59   294 59   077   JN38BR     752 
20180506 0140 S59P           599  246 599  257   JN86AO     744 
20180506 0118 HB9EFK         599  241 599  418   JN47PH     741 
20180505 2211 HG1Z           599  205 599  248   JN86KU     730 
20180505 1730 HB9CXK         59   122 59   022   JN47PM     720 
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