Christmas Presents

The weather before Christmas was quiet and suitable for maintaining antennas. So I improved the matching of my 160m inverted L-antenna to get some more DXCC entities during the days off. Conditions on Top-Band were very good at a K-index of 1 and the signals, especially from Asia, were very loud in times. The following 6 new countries have been logged: Mozambique (C93PA), Azores (CU3EQ), Mongolia (JT1CO), South Korea (HL5IVL), Taiwan (BV1AP), Mexico (XE1TD). Also four new Zones for 160m WAZ (03 / 06 / 23 / 37) and seven new US-States for the 160m WAS were worked: Arkansas (K5GO), California (K6RW), Colorado (K0RF), Michigan (K8TLC), Minnesota (K0TT), Montana (KM7W) and Utah (WA7LNW). It was interesting to see how the terminus of the greyline correlated with the higher signal strengths (see picture).

2017-12-24_160_JATalking about 2m I concentrated to EME during the days between Christmas and New Year. The moon was in good position with low degradation and finally 43  initial callsigns, several new WW-locator and two new DXCC entities found the way into the log. After several tries I was very happy to work Ricardo, LU7FA, on Dec. 27 for DXCC #67 and Bing, YC2MDU, on Dec. 31, 2017 for DXCC #68. It is interesting to mention that LU7FA has just 2 antennas and YC2MDU using just 400 W output. Two great belated Christmas gifts and a happy ending 2017.

Nice Surprise: WW 160m DX Contest Results

Today I got the result of the 2017 “World Wide 160 Meter DX Contest CW” were I participated in the Low Power Category with just the K3 barefoot. Finally it ended up in 6th place in DL out of 84 participants and I am quite satisfied, because operation was just 50% of the total Contest time. The SSB-part endet up with ranking 19 out of 34, but that one was just for fun.

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Black Sea Cup International 2017

The International HF Cup of Black Sea is carried out by BSCC (Black Sea Contest Club). The aim of the competition is to make as many contacts with hams around the world as possible, especially with the radio stations from Black Sea region countries, members of BSCC, BSCC Headquarters’ station, radio clubs and the headquarters of the national amateur radio organizations – members of the IARU (HQ-stations).

Surprisingly I received this nice looking Contest Award today per E-Mail. Thank you BSCC!

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CQ WW DX 160 SSB 2017

SSB Contests are not my favorites at all. Despite this, I made a handful of contacts during this weekends SSB Part of the 2017 CQ WW DX. It was just another chance to test the Heil headset and Contest software in combination with the K3’s voice memory. Peaks were 84 QSO’a an hour just by S&P (search and pound). It seems that everything is working so far. I stopped at 200 Q’s after 3 hours of participation.

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CQ WW DX 160 CW 2017

This weekends “CQ World Wide 160-Meter CW Contest” was a great fun at all. I did not plan to participate, because my Amplifier quit the days before and I had no spare tube for it. After tuning 160 m late Friday night I found more and more interrest to make some QSO’s just with the K3 barefoot. Working Europe was no problem at all but DX, especially NA, was a challenge and hard to fight against the QRO participants. Finally it ended up with 605 QSO’s, 51 DXCC, 7 US-States and 4 Continents.

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Activity as seen on the Elecraft P3 Panadapter.

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