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Author Archives: dh8bqa
Small tropo opening into the U.K. tonight
Tonight was the usual first Tuesday every month 2 m NAC (Nordic Activity Contest) which is accompanied by the UKAC (UK Activity Contest) as well as the IAC (Italian Activity Contest) as well as the SPAC (SP = Polish Activity … Continue reading
Posted in Audio recordings, Contesting, Propagation, Tropo, VHF
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A transverter interface for the ‘7300
After the quite good experience with the Icom IC-7300 during WPX-CW I thought it might be a nice idea to also try it out with a transverter on 2 m in the big VHF contest in two weeks. When searching … Continue reading
Posted in Contesting, Equipment, VHF
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PJ4 – Bonaire #142 on 6 m
Returning from QRL today 6 m was closed. I left the RX on 50.313 MHz FT8 in monitoring mode while doing different things around the shack. Every now and then some signals from EI popped up and vanished again. Then … Continue reading
Posted in DX, Meteor Scatter, Propagation, Sporadic E, VHF
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Weekend VHF activities
Unfortunately not that much to report. I had blocked the weekend for the IARU Region 1 50 MHz contest but conditions were basically non-existent. A few Meteor Scatter contacts every now and then, nothing else worth mentioning on Saturday. 🙁 … Continue reading
Posted in Audio recordings, Contesting, DX, Meteor Scatter, Propagation, Sporadic E, VHF
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ESØUG & ESØUG/8 – IOTA & VHF DXpedition
Uwe, DL3BQA, co-owner of our station, is currently on an IOTA & VHF DXpedition to Estonia. He was joined by some guys from Dresden (DM7A contest club), i.e. Fred, DH5FS, Steffen, DH1DM, and Henrik, DGØLFF. You can see their schedule … Continue reading
Posted in Expeditions, Meteor Scatter, VHF
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New ones on 6 & 4 m today
Not much to report from the rest of the week. Had another small 4 m opening Tuesday evening but just two QSOs worked. Today was plenty of ES again on 6 & 4 m but most of it was more … Continue reading
Posted in Propagation, Sporadic E, VHF
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WPX-CW Claimed Scores :-)
Well, seems I was a lucky guy with #2 world-wide and hope the log check will not drop me behind LZ1NG. 😉 Guiseppe, IT9VDQ, clearly had the location advantage again (and is a great OP, of course) but beating LZ1NG … Continue reading
Posted in Contesting
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Sporadic-E & Tropo on one day! :-)
Wow … that’s been a great evening on VHF again! 6, 4 & 2 m were hot all day long but unfortunately I had to spend the day in QRL. There were some massive 2 m ES openings but I … Continue reading
Posted in Propagation, Sporadic E, Tropo, VHF
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OH5Z’s reaction – bravo!
In my recent WPX-CW blog post I had commented on the bad signal of OH5Z. I was pleased to find an email by Timo, OG9X, one of the operators at OH5Z, in my inbox this morning. He allowed me to … Continue reading
Posted in Contesting
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Small 4 m opening
Today saw a small 4 m opening. The band was open for almost an hour to Portugal around 14z. I could hear the beacons CS5BFM/B from IM59 and CS5BAM/B from IN51 quite well but unfortunately no stations QRV. 🙁 Also … Continue reading
Posted in Propagation, Sporadic E, VHF
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First Sporadic-E this season :-)
Well, writing two blog posts on the same day must mean something special! Indeed, it does! 😉 We had the first real Sporadic-E opening here up Northeast. 😎 I’ve been hogging the station for over a week now but VHF … Continue reading
Posted in Audio recordings, Meteor Scatter, Propagation, Sporadic E, Tropo, VHF
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CQ WPX CW 2018 & further 7300 experiences
Another CQ WPX CW is in the books! As usual I decided to do a 10 m single band operation. I just like the band, especially in sunspot minimum it offers a variety of propagation modes most people are not … Continue reading
Posted in Audio recordings, Contesting, Equipment, Propagation, Sporadic E
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IC-7300 – the first “overflow” situation ;-)
Well, yesterday I finally had the first situation with the OVF indicator making it onto the display – frontend ADC overflow! I was wondering why I got it on 6 m and first suspected some strong ES opening with TV/broadcast … Continue reading
Posted in Equipment
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A bit of 4 m MS this morning
Played around on 4 m Meteor Scatter this morning (stayed overnight at the station). Conditions were quite nice with lots of reflections from my QSO partners but the low ERP on my side still ment QSOs took very long, in … Continue reading
Posted in Meteor Scatter, Propagation, VHF
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IC-7300 – first impressions
Now having played with the radio for a few days it’s maybe time to give some feedback on my first impressions. Setup was a breeze! Be it all the menu settings, recording voice files for the internal voicekeyer, programming the … Continue reading
Posted in Audio recordings, Equipment, Propagation, Sporadic E, VHF
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Z3 – Macedonia, DXCC #36 on 4 m
Sporadic-E still isn’t kicking off on 4 m. 🙁 There are some slight attempts of the MUF to make it over 70 MHz but so far it’s just scratching it. Under these circumstances FT8 really seems to help, at least … Continue reading
Posted in Propagation, Sporadic E, VHF
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Current antennas
The perfect blue sky weather called for taking an up-to-date photo of our antennas today: Left to right: Tower with a 6 ele GØKSC OWA for 15 m and an 8 ele YU7EF for 6 m at about 14 m … Continue reading
IC-7300 – a new radio is “in da house” ;-)
Recently I sold my Elecraft KX3. While it was not a bad radio (except a few glitches like the poor speaker) it was mostly collecting dust. I do not do that many portable ops anymore after having built quite a … Continue reading
Posted in Equipment
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Antenna work & VHF May Contest
Finally I had some time to go visit the guys and our station again last weekend. A distance of 2 x 700 km means I need to take Friday and Monday off for traveling and that is rather luxery in … Continue reading
Posted in Antennas, Contesting, VHF
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CQ WPX SSB 2018
Initially I wanted to go the 700 km to the station and do the contest locally. Unfortunately two facts prohibited me doing so: First of all one of my grandmas died 🙁 and I had to spare 2 days of … Continue reading
Posted in Contesting
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