The less OPs in June the more OPs in July! This time we could activate almost all operators for the contest weekend.

A lot of OPs, fine weather, almost no failures and excellent results, with a word: a perfect contest!

We started on Friday as usual with loading the vans, right after the rain stopped. Just arrived at the "Schneekopf" mountain on Saturday morning 0700UT the sun was shining from a beautiful blue sky. Everything was moved out of the van quickly with no sorrow to get wet. Also the rest of our team arrived early and for some hours we were busy setting up lots of masts and antennas.



We finished our work on 1300UT so one hour was left to establish the computer network and WLAN link. This time we had to connect 6 notebooks via local WLAN together : 2m, 70cm, 23cm, 13/9cm, 6/3cm and ON4KST. The Internet uplink was made via a temporary WLAN link over 30km with 1MBit/s (see the small grid antenna on the picture above). On 1400UT everything was up and running.



The work on the bands started normally. QRM from east on 2m and even on 23cm as usual. The expected rain scatter on 3cm was only marginal. Soon we had the first 24 / 47 / 76GHz - QSOs in the log, while Edgar, DL2ALI, and Steffen, DL4ALI were portable on the "Inselsberg" mountain in JO50FU. After that a long chat with Pavel, OK1AIY/p on the "Klinovec" mountain was going on 47GHz with strong signals on both sides. We should have tried 76GHz this time!



Meanwhile the traditional barbeque was celebrated while the "night shifters" tried to get a minute of sleep. The other OPs were struggling both with QRM and skeds on one side and "Cuba Libre" on the other side. Not easy to manage this! Later in the evening the wind calm down and a beautiful sunset was catching the operators' attention!



On Sunday morning after a short period of sleep the work on 23cm>> was starting again. The conditions seemed to be slightly above normal. We could reach S5 on 9cm for the very first time, even on 3cm S57C was in the log via tropo!  Unfortunately the tests with OK1AIY/p on 76GHz were cancelled because of bad propagation. Maybe next time! So nothing special else happened after that just QSOs, QSOs, QSOs...