July VHF Contest ’19

Another July contest in the books. Condx were rather average most of the time. The night hours brought some nice DX so the average per QSO was 420 km which is unusually high. Around 400 km/QSO is quite normal for a July contest from up here but again as last year I missed lots of OK/OM stations that normally help to higher the QSO average so it was rather unexpected. On the other hand there were some really great tropo DX contacts to the west with good signals …

F8KGU – 923 km:

G5LK/P – 903 km:

G4ZAP/P – 886 km:

Not that nice was the signal quality of some of the participants. The worst example was probably SN7L who was up to 40 kHz wide even with antennas pointing into different directions. 🙁

SN7L  on 144.170 MHz using a big part of the spectrum alone due to his bad wide signal. 🙁 And this was over a 285 km (!!!) path not even beaming at him! Won’t imagine how bad it must have been for stations nearby … 🙁

Our new IC-9700 played quite well. I was really sastified with it’s perfomance. Of course the bandscope was/is a big plus as already experienced with the 7300 on other bands, too. If you search the band you stop at signals shown on the bandscope although there’s no signal currently audible as the station that was transmitting there was just listening himself, i.e. for a QSO exchange or the like. In former times you would have simply tuned further and probably missed that station. 😎

But of course the best radio can’t help overall activity which I found lacking again. Total result is on par with last year but that was not a good one either. Seems it will only be place 3 this year as besides Tom, DR1H, who can’t be beaten from up here, also Michael, DL6IAK/P, put in a very good result with over 200k points unchecked …

Contest Report from DH8BQA in JO73CE at 144 MHz
===============================================

Contest : DARC JULY '19
Date    : 2019 Jul 06 to 2019 Jul 07
Section : 01 144MHz Single OP
QTH     : Woltersdorf

TX      : IC-9700 + PA, 750 W
RX      : IC-9700 + ATF 54143
Antenna : 10 ele DK7ZB Yagi, 20 mAGL, 70 mASL
Log     : TACLog by OZ2M, 1,995, http://www.qsl.net/oz2m

QSOs    :  346
-invalid:    0                                       Points/QSO
-valid  :  346     QSO-points (*1)    :    145003           419
WWLs    :   79     WWL bonus (0)      :         0             0
DXCCs   :   21     DXCC bonus (0)     :         0             0
                   ------------------------------        ------
                   Total score        :    145003           419

ODX     : YT4B in JN94SD at 1079 km

Worked World Wide Locators:
JN19:  1   JN78:  2   JO01:  2   JO43: 10   JO64:  5   JO91:  1
JN37:  1   JN79: 17   JO02:  4   JO44:  2   JO65:  3   JO94:  1
JN38:  1   JN85:  2   JO11:  1   JO46:  1   JO67:  2   JP90:  1
JN39:  3   JN86:  3   JO20:  4   JO50:  9   JO70: 12   KN05:  1
JN47:  2   JN87:  2   JO21:  2   JO51: 14   JO71: 10   KN08:  1
JN48:  7   JN88:  7   JO22:  1   JO52:  7   JO72:  6   KN09:  2
JN49:  7   JN89: 10   JO30:  7   JO53:  6   JO73:  3   KN18:  1
JN58:  4   JN94:  1   JO31: 13   JO55:  1   JO74:  1   KO04:  2
JN59:  5   JN95:  2   JO32:  2   JO59:  1   JO77:  1   KO05:  1
JN68:  5   JN96:  1   JO33:  2   JO60: 11   JO80: 10   KO13:  1
JN69:  5   JN97:  4   JO40:  3   JO61: 12   JO82:  1   KO14:  1
JN75:  1   JN98:  4   JO41:  8   JO62: 22   JO83:  2   KO15:  2
JN76:  2   JN99: 11   JO42: 12   JO63:  1   JO90:  2   KO25:  3
JN77:  2   

Worked DXCCs:
9A :   4   G  :   6   LY :   6   ON :   3   S5 :   5   UA2:   4
DL : 183   HA :   8   OE :   6   OZ :   3   SM :   7   UR :   1
EU :   1   HB :   2   OK :  63   PA :   8   SP :  12   YU :   2
F  :   3   LA :   1   OM :  18   

Top 20 QSO-points:
20190707 0745 YT4B           559  262 599  280    JN94SD   1079
20190707 0507 YU7ACO         559  231 559  295    KN05RD   1037
20190706 2304 9A0V           559  212 599  251    JN95PE    963
20190707 0005 G3PYE/P        559  219 559  141    JO02CE    949
20190706 2104 F8KGU          59   188 59   342    JN19BQ    923
20190706 2258 9A8D           55   211 59   155    JN95LM    919
20190706 2158 G5LK/P         55   203 56   337    JO01QD    903
20190706 2316 9A1N           559  213 599  194    JN85LI    894
20190706 2051 G3XDY          559  183 599  038    JO02OB    886
20190706 2155 G4ZAP/P        59   202 57   329    JO01PU    886
20190707 0843 G4SWX          529  278 529  002    JO02RF    865
20190707 1100 9A1E           559  314 599  280    JN85QT    852
20190706 2336 G4CDN          579  217 589  011    JO02SS    849
20190706 1750 HG3X           59   123 59   083    JN96EE    834
20190706 2253 S59DEM         59   210 59   380    JN75DS    825
20190706 1908 HB9EWY         59   151 59   179    JN37WA    821
20190706 2011 SF40RO         529  179 559  001    JP90JA    810
20190707 0015 HB9GF          59   220 59   270    JN47BC    803
20190707 0439 LA0BY          419  225 519  002    JO59IX    785
20190706 2224 UZ3I           599  207 599  197    KN18JT    773
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