2009
Montenegro (4O)
I had the great pleasure to operate from Rancos station in Montenegro. Just the day before I arrived antenna works were finished and the station was ready to go. Just installed the German keyboard and I was ready to receive QTCs. It was my first time I operated with SO2R technique and I was really fascinated how easy and efficient it was. So it was a pitty that the microham MK2R+ somehow quit and refused to work. So I had to switch to table microphone on radio A and to hand microphone on radio B. It needed some time to get used to but it really worked good. Most of the contest were done without F1 and table mic.
In general conditions on the high bands were better the first day. Nothing heard on 10m on the second day. On 20m I had to experience that the master.dat doesn't help with all that KJ1ABC/M stations. And of course all with numbers below 10 and without an idea what this guy wanted to say: "Any QTCs?" So I missed somehow some 200-300 QTCs.
I really was scared to hear all the small stations from Germany working 4W6AL and my 19 elements on the towers in Montenegro can't help me to get through the pileup...But in the end propagation moved south and it was an easy one.
Walter DJ6QT sitting on Madeira didn't want to give QTCs to me. Every time I asked he said: "Sorry, just gave the last one." I think that was the revenge for Dayton where he always missed the Bavarian wheat beer in the BCC suite...hi.
Last one: I was really lucky with the weather. The whole weekend we had great weather with sunshine and temperatures over 25 degrees. In the morning after the contest it started to rain heavily and big thunderstorms were around the building. Somewhere in the shack I even smelled something burned...Not to mentioned if this happened at the weekend...
Many thanks also to Achim (YU1YV) who was a great help with everything on the mountain top (preparing meals, turning Tower 2 and the 80m Yagi, ...)!
And also many thanks to Ranco that he gave me a chance to operate this wonderful station!
Link to the picture gallery: Click here
| QSO | QTC | CTY | MULT | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80m | 109 | 30 | 40 | 160 |
| 40m | 829 | 324 | 70 | 210 |
| 20m | 1,054 | 849 | 91 | 182 |
| 15m | 92 | 120 | 38 | 76 |
| 10m | 3 | 0 | 3 | 6 |
| Totals | 2,087 | 1,323 | 242 | 634 |
Score: 2,158,136
United States of America (K)
This was the first time ever Anja and I visited the United States. Motivated by Uli DL2HBX / KK8I, we planned a visit at his place in Detroit, combined with a round trip through 14 states. Including the visit of the amateur radio's biggest fair, the Hamvention in Dayton, OH. we furthermore had the chance to visit our good old friend Rick DJ0IP / NJ0IP, who was living with his wife Sybille and his dog Sally north of Oklahoma City.
On our trip we visited following states:
- Alabama
- Arkansas
- Illinois
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Michigan
- Missouri
- Mississippi
- New York
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Pennsylvania
- Tennessee
- Texas
Link to the picture gallery: Click here
Norway (LA)
After a successful DXpedition to Willis Island 2008 (VK9DWX), we were invited by the LA DX Group to give a presentation at their annual meeting.
Anja, Tom and I had a great weekend with a lot of sightseeing (only Anja), a lot of trash-talk about DX, contest and amateur radio in general (only Tom and me) and very good food.
Link to the picture gallery: Click here