m3php.com

Saturday saw the yearly EU HF Championship and unlike other years when I normally miss it, as I’m normally on holiday, I was able to take part! Conditions overall wasn’t too bad and I spent 3hrs 40mins search and pounce using the Yaesu FT-950 and the 80m CW special Windom for logging I used Win-Test which preformed brilliant like always!

The first hour search and pounce was hard going probably due to everyone running more power and bigger antennas then me, but I still had fun in the process! Two hours in and it was getting a lot easier to work stations.

Even better was being able to pick up 15 QSOs (14 years) on 15m! I didn’t find that 10m opened that great so only managed to work 4 QSOs all being new year’s which wasn’t so bad! Like normal though the main band was 20m with 69 QSOs (36 years) and on 40m 5 QSOs all being new years.

As I didn’t operate during the evening never managed to pickup anymore on 40m or 80m but there’s always next year to do a better effort!

BAND   QSO DUP YRS  POINTS   AVG
----------------------------------
160     0   0   0       0  0.00
80     0   0   0       0  0.00
40     5   0   5       5  1.00
20    69   0  36      69  1.00
15    15   0  14      15  1.00
10     4   0   4       4  1.00
----------------------------------
TOTAL    93   0  59      93  1.00
==================================
TOTAL SCORE : 5 487

Instead of doing a report each day, I’ve decided to do a monthly recap of what I’ve worked on the air. This month really hasn’t been much of a radio one for me; due to all sorts of reasons but never the less I’ve managed to put 138 contacts into the log book.

The main bulk of the contacts this month are around Europe using PSK31 & RTTY which isn’t really a surprise with the poor conditions but didn’t manage to get a few good contacts, with the best being:

• JW7G (20m) SSB
• VU2NKS (20m) PSK31
• C6AXD (20m) RTTY
• AD1L (20m) PSK31
• KE5AAO/MM (40m) PSK, just off the coast of West Africa
• KF4IMF (40m) PSK31

Also during this month was the IARU HF Championship, which I normally do a semi serious effort in but this year it wasn’t to be was the weekend was plagued with health problems but did manage 44 contacts. (Read full report)

Yesterday I went along to the Oxford & District ARS as I was invited to give a talk about HamTests.co.uk which Paul (M0TZO) and I have run since April 2006. This was the second talk I’d given at the club (the last one was on PSK31) I tried to keep the talk as non technical as possible covering:

• How we started HamTests.
• The first version of the system.
• The current website and its features.
• The Kenwood Trophy which we got awarded
• The future

All this I managed to squeeze into just under 25mins of actual talk and along the way stopped along the way to answer questions people had making it more of “friendly” and I think it came across well and the members seemed to be impressed with the website!

The next time a HamTests talk will be done is next year by M0TZO at one of his local clubs.

Normally I put in a serious effort for the IARU contest, but this year it all went a wrong from Friday morning. When I noticed I was having issues with my newly grafted left eye, the hospital gave me eye drops and sent me on my way with a follow up appointment for Saturday morning. That day they decided to remove a stitch from my eye which was causing me problems after this I knew the contest was going to be a near on impossible task the pain was unbelievable!

After little bit of rest I decided that I wanted to have at least a couple of qsos in the contest so I set aside an hour 5-6pm, it started off rather slow but soon started to pick up working stations on 15m which is normally dead contests always seem to make their own propagation, then picked up a few stations on 10m then it was onto 20m where I worked the most after this it was a matter of working the odd qso on 40m and 80m.

All in all I was pleased I got something in the log but nothing like previous years!

Contest         : IARU HF World Championships
Callsign        : M3PHP
Mode            : PHONE
Category        : Single Operator (SO)
Band(s)         : All bands (AB)
Class           : Low Power (LP)
Zone/State/...  : 27
Operating time  : 1h15

 BAND   QSO DUP ITU  HQ  POINTS   AVG
--------------------------------------
  160     0   0   0   0       0  0.00
   80     1   0   0   1       1  1.00
   40     6   0   0   6       6  1.00
   20    24   0   5  12      50  2.08
   15     9   0   3   4      21  2.33
   10     4   0   2   1       8  2.00
--------------------------------------
TOTAL    44   0  10  24      86  1.95
======================================
         TOTAL SCORE : 2 924