The weather forecast for the contest weekend was not
clear. Some forecasters announced storm with heavy rain and temperatures
about 2-5°C. Others announced snowfall.
The vans were loaded on Friday and at 14:00 (CET) we
started in Gotha to our winter contest HQ, the Wetzstein. We arrived
around 16:00 in the afternoon. Olli (DL2ARD) and Frank (DL1WA) were
already on site and finished the installation of the 70cm antennas.
We unloaded the vans and started with the installation of the microwave
equipment. We wanted to install as much antennas and transverters before
dawn as possible. The sky was cloudy and it was kind of windy and
sometimes really gusty on the tower.
Oliver and I (DB5SB) started to install the 23cm antenna and the new
200W PA on the first mast on top of the tower while Harti (DL6AUI) and
Frank (DL2ALF) installed the transceivers in the microwave shack and set
up the contest WLAN for the first tests with our new contest software.
After some configuration issues the software ran smoothly and the voice
and CW keyers were set up.
After dawn we tried to set up the shacks and went to bed at 1:00.
At 7:00 in the morning Harti waked up the crew for some energy spending
breakfast with “DL1WA -Special-Coffee (black oil)”. The weather was
gusty with a mixture of snow and rain. We continued setting up our
equipment. The antenna masts for 2m were installed, the PA and shacks
for 2m and 70cm were set up and we continued to mount the microwave
antennas on the tower which took several hours even because of the bad
weather.
We decided to put the microwave antennas on the tower this year because
of the additional 15m height over ground we gained. At 14:00 (CET)
everything was set up and running.
At 16:00 Detlef (DL3ALI) told us that he hears us on 3cm with a very
strong signal but we weren’t able to hear anything. The receiver part of
our new 25W transverter seems to have a problem. We decided to replace
it with the “old” 5W equipment we luckily took there for backup reasons.
At 16:45 3cm was QRV again (with “QRP”).
The contest itself provided us some really good results. Unfortunately
the weather on Sunday changed during the course of the morning. As we
got up at 7:00 it was a sunny day, temperatures around 0°C and about 3cm
of snow which felt down during the night. At 8:00 some strong fog was
coming up and the SHF-Crew couldn’t get as much QSO’s as expected.
Roland (DK4RC) tried to get one QSO with his new 76GHz equipment, but
the fog was too dense.
At 14:00 we started deinstalling and unmounting the microwave equipment
while the sun came out and provided us a nice and warm afternoon. While
demounting a stunt pilot showed some really spectacular stunts with his
aircraft in the sky near our contest location.
At 17:30 we finished loading the vans, took the obligatory team photo
and we took our ways home.
Some claimed scores :
|
Band |
QSOs |
ODX Call |
ODX Loc |
ODX km |
|
144MHz |
775 |
G5B |
IO92 |
840 |
|
432MHz |
294 |
9A3B |
JN95 |
741 |
|
1.2GHz |
125 |
HB9AOF |
JN36 |
623 |
|
2.3GHz |
51 |
PI4Z |
JO11 |
544 |
|
3.4GHz |
15 |
DL1SUN |
JO53 |
348 |
|
5.6GHz |
10 |
OK2RKB |
JN89 |
400 |
|
10GHz |
20 |
OE5VRL/5 |
JN78 |
302 |
|
24GHz |
5 |
OK1AIY/P |
JO60 |
106 |
|
47GHz |
4 |
OK1AIY/P |
JO60 |
106 |
We hope for good results now and hope to cuagn in May.
