Leaving the QTH this evening we had a wonderful blue sky for a change and after closing the gates and looking at the antennas I couldn’t resist to take a photo although not too good a quality as taken with an old smartphone. 😉 What you see left to right is our 6 ele OWA Yagi for 15 m on a 15 m boom about 50 m away from the station. Next are 2 x 10 ele DK7ZB 2 m Yagis with elevation mounted vertically and currently used for EME. The tower did carry a 4 x 10 ele horizontal array for moonbounce before but we had to disassemble it a while ago to save the antennas as the H frame was broken. Hope to put it back up in the near future. The big chimney (about 18 m plus antenna mast) has a 6 ele OWA Yagi for 10 m with an 11 m boom as well as a horizontal 10 ele DK7ZB 2 m Yagi on top used for TR, AU, ES & MS. Mounted sideways to the small chimney is the remote mast featuring a 4/4 duoband Yagi for 10 & 6 m as well as a 9 ele LFA Yagi for 2 m. Rightmost is the last tower carrying a 4 ele Yagi for 20 m (just a 10 m boom) and a 5 ele Yagi for 6 m. The big chimney also holds the 80, 40 & 30 m dipoles (all Inverted-V) as well as the apex of our 160 m full-size lazy loop.
Plans are to mount a new/better 6 m Yagi above the 15 m beam and something dualband for 17/12 m above the 20 m beam. Also need to install some better lowband antennas, especially for receive (maybe just temporary solutions during the winter). So as you can see still plenty of work left for the future. 😉
What a nice evening! Did not do many QSOs on 6 m this season yet although there were already a few openings. Either skip was not right from “blackhole” JO73 or I was not at the station. Tonight has been a different matter. Got a phone alert from Sandro, DD3SP, reporting he had just worked ZD7VC on 6 m. Station was on but I was doing other things around so went over to the desk and sure enough he was audible, although just above the noise (he was 55-57 about 100 km more south … location, location, location 
). Tried calling but everybody else had a better skip. Bruce once came back with DH8 and another time with BQA but no complete QSO. He soon vanished into the noise so I already thought that was it. Kept the frequency on while doing other things again when he suddenly returned about 10 minutes later. Not louder than 52 on the meter but after 2 calls (and nobody else calling, the pile-up started again just after my QSO – lucky!) we had a complete QSO. 🙂 About 2 minutes later he was gone again and never heard back. So you really have to be there at the right time, no mercy! It’s been a while since I last worked a new one on 6 m so quite happy. 😉
While waiting today for Heiko, DG1BHA, to arrive for the 15 m rotator care I made a few more QSOs in CQMM. Seems to be an interesting contest although activity was not too high. Did 50 QSOs yesterday, 100 while waiting for Heiko and finally another 100 after the 15 m rotator was fixed and before leaving the station to go back into town. We had a surprise opening on 10 m late afternoon with very strange path’ and amazing signal strength’ but more on that in a separate blog entry, maybe tomorrow when back in Cologne.
