Before being able to do the IARU-VHF contest last weekend we had to do some serious antenna repair work. It was just 2 weeks ago when Uwe called to tell me something was broken, he could not tune the 2 m antenna anymore. So we already started Friday afternoon at the club station. The 10 ele DK7ZB Yagi is our highest antenna and to take it down means all else needs to come down, too: HF dipoles, 10 m beam, 10 GHz beacon antenna, 70 cm repeater antenna, etc. So it took Heiko, DG1BHA, almost 4 hours before we finally had the antenna on the ground and could check what was wrong (of course we had checked all else including cables upfront). Repair took all Saturday morning and getting it all up again took another 3 hours. We were finished just 1 hour before the contest so starting on Friday was the right decision. 😉 The old dipole box held up for over 5 years. The new one is much more stable so we hope it will now last even longer. 😉
Broken feeder – the outer solder connection broke probably due to all the vibration produced by birds sitting, starting & landing on the dipole arms
Our outside “repair center” 😉 We really needed two soldering irons in parallel to warm up the copper sufficiently for a solid solder connection
New dipole box with probably a little more solid solder connections 😉
Heiko up on the chimney re-mounting everything – tough job!
Concerning the contest all went exceptionally fine until we finished the night shift. We were really convinced we would make it over the 500 QSOs “barrier” easily this time. We worked a lot of great DX during the night although conditions were not really enhanced. I had worked the 3 most distant stations already several times before during the July contests I usually do single OP in from the club QTH. Normally we’re up on the hill during May and September and direction YU is not a very good one from JO73CF but much better from JO73CE although about 30 m lower (which is a lot in our region, hi). But then on Sunday things slowed down quite dramatically! 🙁 While we had worked 310 QSOs during the first 12 hours we only worked another 140 during the second half of the contest. It’s not unusual that Sunday is slower than Saturday but the difference was very pronounced this time and we really had to motivate ourselves to keep going … Nevertheless it was probably one of the best results we ever did from the lower club QTH. 😎
A nice surprise was the very high activity from Poland! While we usually work about 20-30 SP stations only (being directly at the German-Polish border!) working 62 this time was a new all-time high! We even worked more SPs than OKs which is very unusal, too.
Contest Report from DF0TEC in JO73CE at 144 MHz
===============================================
Contest : IARU-VHF-Contest 2018
Date : 2018 Sep 01 to 2018 Sep 02
Section : 02 144MHz Multi-OP
QTH : Woltersdorf
Co-OPs : DG1BHA;DH8BQA;DL3BQA
TX : IC-7400 + PA, 750 W
RX : IC-7400 + MGF1302
Antenna : 10 ele DK7ZB Yagi, 20 mAGL, 70 mASL
Log : TACLog by OZ2M, 1,995, http://www.qsl.net/oz2m
QSOs : 450
-invalid: 0 Points/QSO
-valid : 450 QSO-points (*1) : 183469 408
WWLs : 95 WWL bonus (0) : 0 0
DXCCs : 23 DXCC bonus (0) : 0 0
--------------------------- ------
Total score : 183469 408
ODX : YT4B in JN94SD at 1079 km
Worked World Wide Locators:
JN36: 1 JN76: 3 JO11: 1 JO53: 6 JO73: 9 JO99: 1
JN37: 3 JN77: 2 JO20: 3 JO55: 2 JO74: 6 KN05: 1
JN38: 3 JN78: 2 JO21: 4 JO56: 1 JO76: 1 KN08: 1
JN39: 8 JN79: 7 JO30: 5 JO57: 1 JO77: 1 KN09: 6
JN47: 4 JN85: 1 JO31: 19 JO59: 1 JO80: 7 KN18: 1
JN48: 8 JN86: 4 JO32: 6 JO60: 15 JO81: 3 KO00: 1
JN49: 10 JN87: 1 JO33: 4 JO61: 18 JO82: 3 KO02: 1
JN56: 1 JN88: 7 JO40: 7 JO62: 26 JO83: 4 KO03: 1
JN57: 1 JN89: 12 JO41: 9 JO63: 4 JO84: 2 KO05: 1
JN58: 2 JN94: 1 JO42: 9 JO64: 5 JO86: 1 KO06: 1
JN59: 5 JN95: 4 JO43: 7 JO65: 6 JO88: 1 KO13: 1
JN63: 1 JN98: 3 JO44: 1 JO67: 2 JO90: 4 KO14: 2
JN67: 2 JN99: 8 JO46: 2 JO68: 1 JO91: 3 KO15: 1
JN68: 7 JO01: 3 JO50: 16 JO70: 16 JO92: 1 KO22: 1
JN69: 11 JO02: 1 JO51: 17 JO71: 10 JO93: 2 KO25: 2
JN75: 2 JO10: 2 JO52: 12 JO72: 7 JO94: 7
Worked DXCCs:
9A : 4 G : 4 LA : 1 OK : 55 PA : 9 UR : 1
DL : 229 HA : 2 LX : 1 OM : 14 S5 : 7 YL : 1
EU : 2 HB : 5 LY : 6 ON : 5 SM : 14 YU : 4
F : 4 I : 2 OE : 11 OZ : 7 SP : 62
Top 20 QSO-points:
20180901 2303 YT4B 559 283 599 397 JN94SD 1079
20180902 0017 IQ5NN 559 290 599 441 JN63GN 1078
20180902 0125 YU7ACO 559 308 599 151 KN05RD 1037
20180902 0116 YU7W 599 305 599 205 JN95RD 972
20180902 0046 9A0V 559 297 599 299 JN95PE 963
20180902 0139 TM0W 599 309 599 367 JN36BP 929
20180901 2342 G8T 55 284 53 454 JO01KJ 928
20180901 2223 9A8D 559 271 599 152 JN95LM 919
20180901 2241 YU7C 559 279 599 153 JN95SS 910
20180901 2354 G8P 599 288 599 615 JO01QD 903
20180901 2141 G3XDY 559 253 559 166 JO02OB 886
20180901 2350 G0VHF/P 55 287 57 433 JO01PU 886
20180902 0105 9A1E 559 300 599 149 JN85OT 849
20180902 0024 S59DEM 599 291 599 430 JN75DS 825
20180902 0058 S50L 419 298 599 261 JN75ES 825
20180902 0219 HB9GF 59 312 59 294 JN37WB 817
20180901 1614 HB9SO 55 110 53 031 JN37SG 811
20180902 0634 SK0EN 59 346 56 011 JO99JX 806
20180902 0745 HB9QT 59 364 59 148 JN47BC 803
20180901 1419 HB9RF 59 016 59 011 JN47FB 795