THE HAMRADIO DOT COM

I had a quite busy radio weekend – in a bit over 24 hours I participated in seven different radio contests! I was operating from our club station and used our club calls OH1AF, OH1AB and OH1F. These were the contests:

ARRL EME Contest
My first EME contest ever! I have previously worked some EME qsos with WSJT JT65B mode and ARRL EME contest should provide lots of activity. At our club we have 2 x 15 element yagis at 45 meters and 500 watts HA8UG VHF linear amplifier. This is enough to work at least the biggest EME stations. Antennas have no elevation rotator, so it is only possible to work stations before moonset or after moonrise. During the weekend I had three possible openings, windows, to work EME qsos. In the first window I didn’t get any qsos, in the second worked RK3FG and UA3PTW and then finally in the last moonset during the last 15 minutes I got IK3MAC (booming signal, no suprise), EA2AGZ and Mr. WSJT himself K1JT. Five qsos was less I was hoping for, but I am not very experienced EME operator yet. Unfortunately next EME contest is same time than CQWW SSB Contest.

EU Sprint SSB
EU Sprint seems to lost all activity. I started on 20m and had work almost everyone in 15 minutes. Propagation to Europe wasn’t so good either. So after some qsos I quitted to work later few contacts on 40 and 80 meters. See my posting to 3830-reflector.

California QSO Party
This is very big and active QSO party. Propagation was good enough to work some Californian stations on 20 meters and then after sleeping few hours also on 40 meters in the time of sunrise. See my posting to 3830-reflector.

Oceania Contest SSB
In this contest you work only stations from Oceania. It means mainly VKs and ZLs, but also some YBs, DUs and rare DXs like V85, 9M6, KH0 … Propagation to Oceania was excellent with 15 meters widely open. I even worked loud VK4KW on 10 meters and heard another VK there. In the morning VKs and ZLs were loud on 40 meters long path many hours after sunrise. See my posting to 3830-reflector. Just after contest I heard NH7O on 15 meters SSB …. via long path! South Europeans worked also JAs on 10 meters on Sunday.

DTC – German Telegraphy Contest
This is 80/40m CW only contest. Never worked this one before. And now just made a handful of contacts for fun. I even worked loud NP4Z on 40 meters.

RSGB 21/28 MHz Contest
This is a very old and classic contest. I think they have changed the weekend. I had very poor propagation to UK and worked only 3 stations. GM3WOJ was lonely one on 15m SSB.

SRAL Peruskisa SSB
This Finnish domestic contest has four different classes: “Novice” class (in Finnish the name of this license is “base class” and another one is “general class”) for beginners, Second operator class, General class and Club station class. I took part in club comptetion and decided to use a rare club call OH1AB. Contest lasts 60 minutes and has four 15-minutes periods. I worked some 80 qsos. Now I have to think what to do with my paperlogs.

This weekend my plan is to participate in ARRL EME Contest .. actually for the first time. I have worked some WSJT EME contacts at OH1AF (also known as OH1F), but never in EME contest. So this should be fun. I checked moon times and the first possible elevation of moon to operate is sometime in the Saturday afternoon. I would like to try also 432 MHz (worked WSJT only on 144 MHz). At our club we have 2x15el yagis and 500w for 2 meters and 2x15el yagis plus 100 watts to 70 cm. ARRL EME contest rules are here.

EU Sprint contest is something I used to operate very often in the past. I think I even won one or two (can’t check because EUsprint.com domain has been expired). A speciality of sprint contest is that you need to change frequency after you have made a qso after making CQ. NCJ runs the original sprint contest in the Americas. N6TR has written “The Sprint Surivial Web Page” where you can get help how to run these sprints.