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IARU HF Championship 2009

Peter — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:00:00 +0000

The contest is over and unlike last year didn’t require a hospital visit just before the start, but I didn’t really feel like putting in a serious effort so it was more of a dabble over 2 hours, Saturday afternoon conditions didn’t seem to bad 10/15m was open and a good few stations to work but 20m like normal was the main band which I was expecting although I didn’t hear any North Americans.

The last hour before the end of the contest also seemed reasonable picked up a few more mults on 20/15/10m and even a KB1 and VE* station on 20m ending up with a non spectacular 79 QSOs and a score of 8142 points.

Equipment: Yaesu FT-950, 80m Windom and Win-Test.

July Recap

Peter — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:35:41 +0000

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)

IARU HF Championship Contest

Peter — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:47:35 +0000

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

National Field Day 2008

Peter — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:37:17 +0000

Last weekend was IARU Region 1 National Field Day and just like any other year the Oxford & District Amateur Radio Society, was taking part from the usual location at Worminghall, which is on the boundary of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

Setup began on Friday afternoon once all antennas, tents etc were on site, and luckily the tower is stored on the farm where we normally operate from!

The first thing to go up was the Crushcraft A4S which had been given a good clean a week or two before the weekend, so it was all nice and shiny and hopefully would perform a lot better also setup was 40-80-160m dipoles.

While another team worked on putting up the two tents one for operating and the other used as a cook tent.

On Saturday Dad (M3JFM) and I decided to cycle up to the site which was 22miles round trip with each leg taking about 1 hour 10mins according to the small computer on my bike.

Arriving on site around 11am the equipment was being put into the operating tent this year it was G4FON’s Yaesu FT2000D and G3KLH’s ICOM IC737 and 2 laptops running some custom software made by G4FON.

While this was being setup the receiving antennas where erected K9AY loop (built by M0DDT) and an 80m dipole after this there was plenty of time for drinking tea and having a good old chinwag.