storm, rain and calm autumn weather at the end – contest ... · report 2012_10_en category:...

Report 2012_10_EN

Category: ReportsPublished on Wednesday, 24 October 2012 17:35Written by Super UserHits: 1312

Storm, rain and calm autumn weather at the end –Contest October 2012

(tnx Report de DK5WN)

The last weekend in September 2012 we had a quite nice late summer weather, but when the contestweekend came, a change of the weather with a lot of storm, rain an heavy slow down of temperaturewas predicted caused by a deep low pressure system. So we where shure that our QTH, Mt.Schneekopf in JO50JP would present itself in a very uncomfortable way, just like he did in June andJuly. Harti, DL6AUI mailed to all of the OM’s:

Hello OM’s

Don’t forget to bring enough changing-cloths with you. When building up our antennas and the rig, we will have much water and wind.Maybe the weather is a little bit better when contest starts. Perhaps we will have no rain on Sunday. Putting down all the rig it may be allo.k. again. Let’s see….

Arriving at the top of the Schneekopf in the morning of the 6th of October Frank, DL2ALF, Harti,DL6AUI, Matthias DM5CT and Jens, DL2AKT were just put together one of the both dishes for 23cmon its mast. The second dish, you can see on left hand side, it was but on another mast later on.

Frank, Harti and Jens mounting one of the two 23 cm dishes Matthias and Harti checking it before raising the mast

Its was very stormy indeed, but quite warm whith a temperature of 10 deg Celsius. No rain – thankGod. We were good minded at all, but there was al plenty of work to do until all works well. After themast carrying the first dish was put in the air, the other guys arrived, to build up the antennas for70cm – 4x13ele Flexa-Yagi, a 38ele M² and 4x15ele YU7EF-Yagi antennas.

Report 2012_10_EN http://www.dl0gth.de/index.php/reports/21-report-201210en?tmpl=co...

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Sebastian, DG5CST putting together the 38el M-Suare It’s all ok! 4x13ele Yagig for 432 MHz on its mast

Meanwhile the stormy wind had changed to real storm. Harti, Frank, Jens, Roland (DK4RC) andMatthias were putting together the 13/9 parabolas and the ones for 6/3/1.2cm just at this time andtired it all up in the air, just after all was checked carefully.

Matthias checks ist all, yuo can see the dishes for 6cm and And up its goes… tiring the mast carrying the 6, 3 and 1.2

3cm dishes.

All ok …. Jens checking all the ropes

The antennas were completed by the remainig 23cm-dish. Three hours before the beginning of thecontest all antennas for the 70cm, the 23cm up to 1.2cm band were built up completely. Later on, the


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equipment for 47/76 GHz was put together, just after the beginning of the contest. Both shacks,consisting of two VW-Busses model T5 and T4. The one bus carried the equipment for 70cm band,the other one carried all the stuff above 23 cm.

All ok? Harti, DL6AUI checking the correct building of all Do you think that amateur radio is wireless?

On the 70 cm band we were running an RF-amplifier (by DL2ALF), a transverter TR-432 (Kuhneelectronic), an Elecraft K3 (DL2ARD) and a SSPA made by Roland, DK4RC. As standby rig we hadSebastian’s (DG5CST) Elecraft K3. The transverter TR-1296 (DL2ALF) and an Elecraft K3 (DM5CT)were used on 23 cm together with a RF-amplifier and the PA, both mounted just below the dishes. Onthe microwaves, transverters for the 13cm (DK4RC) and the 9 cm band (DL6AUI) were in use, allthose transverters were controlled by an Icom IC-706. The band change was done electronically byour contest-software WinTest. Working on 13 and 9cm was done by one single OP, another OPworked on 6, 3 and 1.2cm via transverters, controlled by another IC-706, which was mounted in aspecial “ContestRack”.

After the beginning of the contest, the 70 cm-band presented itself in the same way than it did inSeptember on 2 m. Oliver, DL2ARD had one qso after the other, after the first hour there were 88QSO’s in the log followed by another 65 during the 2nd hour. On all bands we had 149 QSO’s duringthe first hour of operation.


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Meanwhile the storm had settled down, and instead of, it started to rain. The rain got more and morestronger and made QSOing very difficult because of static load. The QSO-rate went down rapidly.The arriving cold front caused a quick fall of the temperature, but the rain didn’t stop. Things wentwell so far on 23cm and the microwaves, but on 70cm all collapsed at 1.32 UTC completely.Suddenly we had an extremely bad SWR, water had forced it’s way into the 4x15ele YU7EF Yagisand into the cable, too. Concerning the 4x13ele Flexayagis, the same thing happened. Operation on70cm had to be stopped completely, after dawn we had to “repair” it all by putting down two of theYU7EF Antennas and all the Flexa-Yagis.

A quite frustrating experience. At 09.15 UTC operation started again on 70cm, at 09:21 UTC we hadour ODX: G3CKR/p in IO93AD, in a distance from 917km away from the Schneekopf – we all werevery happy. Despite of the breakdown on 70cm things went quite well there, you can see the 7longest distances in the map downwards:


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DL0GTH - ODXin Octobercontest 10/06/07/2012

Top distances on 70 cm: the longest distances we 23 cm: Topconnections into G, SM an SP

had into England and Italy

On 23cm we were satisfied, too: Just like on 70cm ODX with G3CKR/p in IO93AD, followed by G5B(IO92WS) and SM7LCB (JO86GH). Have a look on the rightside map:

13 cm: ODX with G5B in IO92WS ODX 3 cm: OK2TT in JO80OB

On 13 cm we had a QSO of 786km distance in the evening at 21:00 UTC. As our ODX on 13cm. TheQSO’s with IZ4BEH (JN54), G3XDY (JO02) and S59P (JN86) should be mentioned, too. On3 cm wecould QSO with OK2TT in JO80 – ODX in a distance from 460 km. We succeeded in having contactswit SP6GWB (JO80) and TM2W in JN37 square, both on 3cm, too. Have look on the little tabledownwards:


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Band Date Call UTC DIST (KM) LOC WKD LOCs

70 cm 06.10.2012 G3CKR/p 09:21 917 IO93AD 79

23 cm 06:10.2012 G3CKR/p 19:59 917 IO93AD 65

13 cm 06.10.2012 G5B 21:00 786 IO92WS 38

9 cm 07.10.2012 S57C 11:47 609 JN76PB 18

6 cm 06.10.2012 OL9W 15:33 545 JN99CL 17

3 cm 06.10.2012 OK2TT 14:04 460 JN37NV 23

1,2 cm 06.10.2012 DL7QY 14:29 174 JN59BD 6

0,6 cm 07.10.2012 OK1AIY/p 10:37 156 JO60LJ 4

0,4 cm 07.10.2012 DM5CT 11:48 37 JO50NV 1

During the whole operation we had at total of 868 QSO and were reaching about 251 Squares. Themean of all distances was about 207km/QSO, the total score was 266.107.

We could reach nearly all sqares in central Europe (see map below):

DL0GTH in Octobercontest 2012: nearly all squaresin central Europe coud be reached.

Despite of the temporary brakedown on 70 cm, it was a good result – but was it ok? – Let’s see ….Getting down the antennas and the masts and all the equipment, this we had to do now.

One thing after the other. Into the VW T5 ….. Harti is very busy all the time, putting all the rig, the and

equipment into the T5, and organizing nearly everything .


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Everyone is helping according to the motto: “many hands make light work”. Roundabout 1 ton ofmaterial had to be tired down, put into the VW busses and had to be brought into our basic contestrooms in Gotha and Greiz. At 19:00 UTC it was all OK an all the stuff could remain during the winterin a dry place.

The Crew of DL0GTH on the Schneekopf in JO50JP ... and cheers – we’ll meet you in March 2013

Octobercontest 06/07/10/2012

Many thanks to all of those who helped us, making possible all the success an fun around contesting.Without staying together nothing would work, and there would be no success at all. Thank to of theOM’ s who called us and gave us score. Thank you for your patience especially on the microvawes!


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storm, rain and calm autumn weather at the end – contest ... · report 2012_10_en category:...

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