Another attractive short term Award is issued from the Spanish Amateur Radio Union URE to commemorate the 14th International Antarctic Week 2017 to all radioamateurs worldwide who contact with a number of Special Event Stations that will be active on the HF bands. The four classes Bronze ,Silver, Gold and Platinum depends on the number of special stations worked.
This years CQ WPX RTTY Contest was just to test the new Contest Software “N1MM Logger+” and the new GS53b tube in the amplifier. Both worked excellent and my short time activity endet up with 311 QSO’s.
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.
Activity as seen on the Elecraft P3 Panadapter.
More and more stations appear on the 60m band and activity increases rapidly. After 7 days of operation 45 DXCC entities and 11 CQ-Zones are in the log, including this nice ones:
A6 (United Arab Emirates), C37 (Andorra), CU (Azores), EA8-EH8 (Canary Is.), EA9 (Ceuta & Melilla), KC4 (Antarctica), KP4 (Puerto Rico), SØ (Western Sahara), UM (Uzbekistan), UN (Kazakhstan), ZS (South Africa).
More fun to come, for sure!
Since December 15, 2016, Radio Amateurs in Germany are allowed to use a 15 kHz wide segment on 5 Mhz (Class A only) with max. 15 W EIRP. That was something I was waiting for a long time. On New Years afternoon I easily matched my inverted L-Antenna to 5.360 Mhz and started working on that band in CW and JT65 mode. In just a couple of hours 24 DXCC-countries, incl. TF, W, VE, KP4 were worked and my signal was heard on all six Continents (by PSK-Reporter). What a fun!
Short term Awards become more and more popular nowadays. This one comes from Spain as a free pdf-download and celebrates the 400th Anniversary of the death of the famous writer Miguel de Cervantes, one of the greatest writers in Universal History. His most iconic novel, “Don Quixote” is the most edited and translated book in all Literature History, just behind The Bible.
Got Award-Number #0095 (Plata), #0046 (Gold), #0021 (Platino)
To commemorate the 71st Independence Day of The Republic of Indonesia on August 17, 2016, “Organisasi Amatir Radio Indonesia” proudly present the Special Event Station YB71RI and a nice Award working 5 to 10 Indonesian Districts during the month of August 2016. The Award is free of charge and mailed as pdf-file.
During a nice ES-opening today OJ0DX (Market Reef), operated by a German Crew around DL3DXX, found the way into my logbook on 50 MHz and later also on 1.8 MHz. This is DXCC #101 on 50 MHz.
Another colourful short term Award offered by the “Miller-DX-Club”, dedicated to the Olympic Games 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. The Award is free of charge and could be downloaded as pdf-file. More details here.
Another good Es opening on 2m this Saturday morning. With only 20 Watts out of the Transverter I worked LZ1ZL and LZ1KG from KN31 for a new square and a distance of 1.613 km. Heard but not worked was SV7GBR from KN20IX and several other LZ stations. This was my first ES and first new square since 1989, when I quit serious DX work on 2m!