Oh boy. Seems this is the third year in a row to complain. 😀 Indeed conditions have been even worse than during the last few years. Saturday had such bad condx I could not even hear the big guns from Slovenia which are 700+ kilometers away and usually S5-7 at least. Nothing, nada, zilch, … no copy! 🙁 No Croatia and no Hungary either! Even signals on the shorter path’, i.e. like 250 km, went from S5 or sometimes even S9 down into the noise unreadible within seconds! Was it the bad condx or just bad participation, too? I really struggled to make QSOs on Saturday, no fun!
It only got better late in the evening with condx stabilizing a bit and at least a few of the big ones from Slovenia and Hungary finally popping out of the noise. Still lots of QSB but rising activity from the OK/OM guys on CW helped a bit (although QSO totals with them still way below what we were used to a few years ago). “Luckily” everybody else I talked to complained as well so I was sure it really was the condx, not the equipment. 😀 Interestingly the contacts to the east, i.e. Poland & Lithuania, were much less QSB affected.
Slept about 3 hours. Sunday morning was much better, conditions as well as my mood. Seems they are linearly linked to each other! 😀 Activity was higher now and more DX could be worked, too (although much less than usual). While I still struggled with some of the big distances Croatians the QSO with YT4B over 1.074 km was an easy one and worked right away! 😎 Always amazing, the guys must use a really great location and equipment!
In the end I still made over 350 QSOs, on par with the last two years. But the kilometer average was way down this year thus missing about 10-15k points compared to last and second-last year …
Contest Report from DH8BQA in JO73CE at 144 MHz
===============================================
Contest : DARC JULY CONTEST '20
Date : 2020 Jul 04 to 2020 Jul 05
Section : 01 144MHz Single OP
QTH : Woltersdorf
TX : IC-9700 + PA, 750 W
RX : IC-9700 + ATF51389 pre-amp
Antenna : 10 ele DK7ZB Yagi, 20 mAGL, 70 mASL
Log : TACLog by OZ2M, 1,995, http://www.qsl.net/oz2m
QSOs : 354
-invalid: 0 Points/QSO
-valid : 354 QSO-points (*1) : 129541 366
WWLs : 70 WWL bonus (0) : 0 0
DXCCs : 21 DXCC bonus (0) : 0 0
--------------------------- ------
Total score : 129541 366
ODX : YT4B in JN94SE at 1074 km
Worked World Wide Locators:
JN38: 1 JN77: 1 JN99: 7 JO44: 1 JO65: 5 JO84: 3
JN39: 2 JN78: 2 JO10: 1 JO50: 14 JO67: 1 JO90: 1
JN47: 4 JN79: 19 JO20: 1 JO51: 20 JO68: 1 KN08: 1
JN48: 3 JN85: 2 JO21: 1 JO52: 9 JO70: 13 KN18: 1
JN49: 6 JN86: 3 JO30: 6 JO53: 9 JO71: 14 KO04: 3
JN58: 4 JN87: 3 JO31: 9 JO55: 1 JO72: 6 KO13: 1
JN59: 6 JN88: 7 JO32: 4 JO59: 1 JO73: 6 KO14: 2
JN65: 1 JN89: 11 JO33: 1 JO60: 11 JO74: 1 KO15: 1
JN68: 3 JN94: 1 JO40: 3 JO61: 17 JO75: 1 KO16: 1
JN69: 8 JN95: 1 JO41: 9 JO62: 30 JO80: 6 KO24: 1
JN75: 1 JN97: 1 JO42: 14 JO63: 7 JO83: 2 KO25: 1
JN76: 2 JN98: 5 JO43: 7 JO64: 2
Worked DXCCs:
9A : 4 HA : 6 OE : 3 OZ : 6 SM : 4 UR : 1
DL : 211 HB : 2 OK : 66 PA : 3 SP : 16 YL : 1
EU : 1 LA : 1 OM : 12 S5 : 5 UA2: 3 YU : 1
F : 1 LY : 5 ON : 2
Top 20 QSO-points:
20200705 0520 YT4B 559 200 599 284 JN94SE 1074
20200705 0916 9A0V 599 269 599 349 JN95PE 963
20200705 0934 9A0BB 519 271 599 366 JN85EI 886
20200705 0955 9A1P 559 273 599 456 JN65VG 881
20200705 0945 9A1E 599 272 599 193 JN85QT 852
20200705 0002 S59DEM 599 195 599 467 JN75DS 825
20200705 1050 HB9GF 55 299 59 378 JN47BC 803
20200704 1833 LA0BY 519 118 559 001 JO59IX 785
20200705 0906 UT4YWA 519 267 599 115 KN18LV 775
20200704 2357 S50C 599 194 599 465 JN76JG 771
20200705 1032 ON4KHG 57 293 59 083 JO10XO 759
20200705 0839 S59P 59 262 59 410 JN86AO 744
20200705 0658 S59ABC 55 223 59 244 JN76TO 740
20200704 2322 HG1Z 599 185 599 289 JN86KU 730
20200705 0845 S57O 59 263 59 351 JN86DT 725
20200705 0551 HA6W 599 206 599 427 KN08FB 720
20200705 0707 HB9CXK 59 227 59 049 JN47PM 720
20200704 2037 YL2AJ 559 143 559 020 KO16OX 711
20200705 0541 HA7NK 599 205 599 172 JN97WW 708
20200704 2052 DJ5MW 599 148 599 099 JN47WN 697