Another contest is done, this time on VHF. 😉 It’s been time for this year’s IARU Region 1 VHF Contest. So we went up our local hilltop again to participate. “We” that were Heiko – DG1BHA and Uwe – DL3BQA as locals, Knut – DGØZB and Paul – DL5CW from Berlin (about an 100 km drive), Andy – DL9USA from Spremberg (about 300 km to go) and last not least 😉 myself, Olli – DH8BQA (with about 700 km one tour). Besides those fine VHF operators the guys from one of the local radio clubs made a small field day before the contest, too, so we had even more visitors up on the hill: XYL Doris – the “better half” 
of DL3BQA, YL Gitta – DL3BYA, Horst – DL3BVA, Ronny – DL3BUA, Micha – DM7MRE, Ferdi – DL4FWP, Uwe – DG1BRB, Horst – DC7NEU and SWL Horst – DE3HLA. Lots of nice talks, good food and beer and best of all – a really nice sunny and warm weekend after quite some ugly weather during the last few weeks! 🙂
Big big thanks are due for Heiko who worked hard during the last few days before the contest to finish our new 4 x 6 ele LFA Yagi antenna group. So for the first time ever we were able to use 2 antenna groups in parallel (our good old trusty 2 x 8 ele DK7ZB being the other one). It really paid off to be able to beam into 2 different directions at the same time. We often had big smiles on our faces when getting called by people from those different directions at once knowing we would certainly have missed a few of them without that possibility. Of course we already made plans for further improvements. Hope to find some time during the winter to realize a few of our ideas. 😉
Condx were quite good. Before the contest there were some tropo enhancements enabling the OK guys on the high hills to work into OH. Nothing overhere, though. Nevertheless condx seemed stable at least, not too much QSB and also some nice DX worked although all stations that are usually workable every time. But at least I had the impression it was easier this time … who knows, maybe still a little tropo enhancement after all. 😉
We had worked 300 QSOs after the first 8 hours. Of course you cannot apply simple math like 1/3 of the time thus take QSO number and triple it for the final results … this would be great, wouldn’t it? 🙂 No, of course not, but I really hoped we could do the 600 in total this time. Sorrily we didn’t, maybe next time. Not sure, will have to look it up again, but this might nevertheless be our best result points-wise so far. The average km/QSO should be an all time high, too. These were our most distant contacts:
------------------------------------------------------------------ DATE TIME CALLSIGN LOCATOR BAND MODE QRB ------------------------------------------------------------------ 07/09/2014 05:27 OH1ND KPØØXL 2 m. SSB 933 06/09/2014 16:54 G8T JOØ1KJ 2 m. SSB 928 06/09/2014 16:43 G8P JOØ1QD 2 m. SSB 904 07/09/2014 00:22 9A1N JN85LI 2 m. CW 898 07/09/2014 00:42 9A7W JN85LI 2 m. CW 898 07/09/2014 02:29 GØVHF/P JOØ1PU 2 m. CW 886 07/09/2014 00:48 S59DEM JN75DS 2 m. CW 830 06/09/2014 21:27 UT5W KO2ØNC 2 m. CW 829 07/09/2014 09:11 SK9ØZK JP7ØTO 2 m. SSB 825 06/09/2014 20:24 HB9GF JN37WB 2 m. SSB 821 06/09/2014 22:21 UW5Y KN18OO 2 m. CW 813 06/09/2014 23:56 S57Q JN76PB 2 m. CW 801 07/09/2014 06:02 SKØEN JO99JX 2 m. SSB 801 07/09/2014 06:07 SM4BDQ JP8ØFG 2 m. SSB 795 07/09/2014 05:35 LAØBY JO59IX 2 m. SSB 781 06/09/2014 21:43 ON4LDP JO1ØUN 2 m. CW 779 06/09/2014 22:56 UR7D KN18JT 2 m. CW 775 07/09/2014 00:10 S5ØC JN76JG 2 m. CW 775 06/09/2014 21:37 ON4KHG JO1ØXO 2 m. CW 761 06/09/2014 17:12 F8KID JN38AT 2 m. SSB 753 06/09/2014 20:29 S59R JN76OM 2 m. SSB 750 06/09/2014 17:10 S59P JN86AO 2 m. SSB 749 07/09/2014 04:58 HB9FAP JN47PH 2 m. SSB 745 07/09/2014 03:44 S59ABC JN76TO 2 m. CW 744 06/09/2014 23:36 S57M JN76PO 2 m. CW 741 07/09/2014 11:27 S56P JN76PO 2 m. SSB 741 07/09/2014 00:24 S51ZO JN86DR 2 m. CW 738 07/09/2014 08:28 LY2LE KO24OQ 2 m. SSB 737 07/09/2014 02:13 HG1Z JN86KU 2 m. CW 734 07/09/2014 13:27 PA3HFJ JO11VL 2 m. SSB 734 06/09/2014 21:54 OM3KDX KN19DB 2 m. CW 730 07/09/2014 05:50 SM5KWU JO89IP 2 m. SSB 730 06/09/2014 20:10 S57O JN86DT 2 m. SSB 729 06/09/2014 20:36 F6KQV/P JN38OJ 2 m. SSB 728 07/09/2014 09:26 PA5KM JO11WM 2 m. SSB 727 07/09/2014 00:34 S53O JN86AT 2 m. CW 726 07/09/2014 01:57 HA6W KNØ8FB 2 m. CW 724 07/09/2014 10:57 HB9CXK JN47PM 2 m. SSB 724 07/09/2014 01:07 HG6Z JN97WV 2 m. CW 716 06/09/2014 14:54 HA2U JN87VH 2 m. SSB 706 06/09/2014 15:14 DJ5MW JN47WN 2 m. SSB 701 ------------------------------------------------------------------
After all quite a successfull weekend again with very nice VHF DX and most importantly great people to spend one’s time with. 😉