Day 10 February QSO Challenge

-


I fired up the shack later than usual due to a busy evening. I heard a few Contest/Club Stations warming up their equipment for this weekends Dutch PAAC Contest.

I carried out my usual tune around the HF bands to find some big signals coming in well especially on the 40M band.
I tried busting a pile up that KK1KW was creating on 7.128MHz for a good 30 minuets without success, the operator - Fred pulled the plug before I was heard.

I continued to listen around 40M as there was plenty of activity, on 7.096MHz I heard Contest Station CN3A located in Safi, Morocco booming in at 5/9 +.

At 21.47 utc, I called a couple of times and managed to penetrate another pile up to work CN3A with a 5/9 report completing today's QSO challenge!

The Total  distance between our stations is 1565 miles short path. It will be interesting to find out how many miles I end up covering in the end.  I shall add up the total mileage of every completed QSO challenge, if I manage the whole of February that is.

The CN3A Contest Station is operated by CN8WK, IK2QEI, IK2SGC & SV8CS.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Full Size Delta Loop for 20M

-
Image
I came across a simple delta loop design courtesy of dxzone found on the net some time ago and have been planning to give it a go for a while. This weekend I had a couple of hours spare, so I decided to give it a go using some 2mm multi strand wire cable, a dipole centre and a mixture of 75 ohm and 50 ohm coaxial cable. The delta loop is supposed to be resonant on 20 meters but I found it to be a little high so at present I am tuning the Loop with my mfj-969 which copes extremely well. The resonant frequency is 13.2 MHz at the moment so the next chance I get, I shall shorten the overall length making sure that each of the three sides are still equal in length, and hopefully adjusting the antenna for maximum performance ATU free for 14.2 MHz. I believe the miscalculation in the resonant length is probably down to the fact that my wire is covered in the plastic sleeving from the manufacturer which always effects the swr as I have noticed in past experiments with dipoles you always get sl
Read more

Homebrew 40/80 Trap Dipole Design

-
Image
This Antenna design was one that I used about 4 years ago, it worked exceptionally well on 80m and 40m. The size of the antenna makes a Half wave length on 80 meters, and with the traps a half wave on 40m with a SWR (standing wave ratio) of 1:1-1.5 across both bands. It worked well also on 20m with the use of an A.T.U (antenna tuning unit). I made my version of this antenna using 3mm multi strand copper cable which I left covered by the PVC insulation. The traps can either be home brewed using some 40mm diameter plastic drain pipe and winding wire around the pipe approximately 10 turns, then connected in line after the 10 metre lengths. Or the alternative is to purchase some commercially made 7.1 MHz traps, and fit them in line the same way. The antenna can be fed with 50 ohm coax with a home brew balan or again a commercially purchased balan. The wire lengths of the dipole are 2x 10 metres and 2x 6.7 metres as shown on the diagram above. This antenna can be mounted quite low to the gr
Read more

New DX Contact 0n 12 Meters

-
Image
Today I managed a nice QSO with Tom ZD7X who is located at St. Helena which is quite a distance away from my location. I managed to work Tom ZD7X with a 5/9 report operating my FT-767GX with my home brew 20m delta loop assisted with the MFJ-969 to tune the antenna with 50 watts on 12 meters. 12M is rarely open and I have only had a few QSOs on this band so I guess the new Cycle has begun at last! Good DX de 2E0HTS 73
Read more