DK5OH
IARU R1 144Mhz 2021
Great weather and very selective tropospheric ducting.
One year of Corona absence highly motivated us for the IARU R1 VHF contest. We had managed to get the permission that we could move our southwest yagi group
behind the radome which had always covered a few degrees of our antenna horizon. The price that we had to pay for the better antenna position was that we had to increase our cable length to
120 Meters which introduced some additional attenuation.
The core team met on Friday and after erecting 6 of our 8 antenna systems in bright sunshine we enjoyed the obligatory classy Wasserkuppe barbecue. On Saturday
some more very helpful supporters arrived at the scene (thank you DR9A) and we successfully finished our antenna works and finalized them with the classy Wasserkuppe barbecue again.
At first everything seemed to work like a charm and the contest could begin. Then after some time we had to learn our first lesson: A car had obviously driven
over our brand new 120 meter 7/8 inch hardline behind the radome. What remained were two sections of a flattened piece of copper causing our amplifier to trip the SWR protection. A brave
rescue team went out into the darkness and fixed the problem with the aid of water pump pliers. Then we were back on track but we are still unsure how much contacts we lost in that faulty
coax line.
All in all conditions in JO40XL were slightly above average with only some very distinct tropospheric ducting to Scotland on Saturday evening. This seems to
have been different in some parts of OK and SP because this time there was no head to head race with SN7L: At the end of this day they were already more than 40000 points ahead of us and they
managed to double this advantage by Sunday morning.
We finally ended the contest with around 483000 points in bright sunshine. With the aid of the DR9A gang dismantling the station only took us 3 hours and we
left the Wasserkuppe at 17.00 UTC.
Congratulations to SN7L for their outstanding score but what a pitty that they did not reach the 600K borderline. Who knows when the tropo god will give them
this opportunity again?
All in all we worked 34 QSOs with more than 900Km distance this year compared to 25 QSOs in 2020.
Top 10 QSO:
GM0EWX 1314 km IO67UL
GM0HBK 1272 km IO77BC
GM4VVX 1250 km IO78TA
GM4SJB 1227 km IO88BA
GI6ATZ 1162 km IO74AJ
GM4WJA 1153 km IO87MN
GM7WOS 1130 km IO75TW
GM4CXM 1130 km IO75TW
MM0AOQ 1114 km IO87WN
GM4PPT 1111 km IO75SK
0-100 km : 55
100-200 km : 204
200-300 km : 345
300-400 km : 223
400-500 km : 108
500-600 km : 120
600-700 km : 105
700-800 km : 61
800-900 km : 25
900-1000 km : 7
+1000 km : 27
DL: 706 (55.2%)
OK: 114 (8.9%)
F: 67 (5.2%)
I: 65 (5.1%)
PA: 47 (3.7%)
G: 45 (3.5%)
SP: 33 (2.6%)
OE: 29 (2.3%)
S5: 26 (2%)
OM: 21 (1.6%)
GM: 20 (1.6%)
9A: 20 (1.6%)
HB: 16 (1.3%)
ON: 16 (1.3%)
SM: 15 (1.2%)
HA: 13 (1%)
OZ: 13 (1%)
YU: 4 (0.3%)
GD: 3 (0.2%)
LA: 2 (0.2%)
LX: 2 (0.2%)
E7: 2 (0.2%)
GI: 1 (0.1%)
|QSO| Km | Moy | Odx | Loc |
14h | *155|*43837| 283| 1091| *51|
15h | 101| 34433| 341| 1130| 48|
16h | 101| 35293| 349| 1114| 47|
17h | 81| 28538| 352| 1250| 43|
18h | 82| 31991| 390| 1072| 48|
19h | 68| 30192| 444| 1272| 42|
20h | 72| 30834| 428| *1314| 40|
21h | 58| 23744| 409| 791| 42|
22h | 47| 20585| 438| 1227| 30|
23h | 30| 14391| 480| 912| 27|
00h | 28| 12201| 436| 760| 21|
01h | 15| 6518| 435| 686| 14|
02h | 15| 6269| 418| 891| 14|
03h | 15| 7280| *485| 923| 13|
04h | 20| 8491| 425| 854| 19|
05h | 31| 14100| 455| 1004| 25|
06h | 47| 20274| 431| 1043| 37|
07h | 46| 16101| 350| 803| 31|
08h | 70| 24714| 353| 929| 37|
09h | 52| 18571| 357| 845| 35|
10h | 41| 13769| 336| 889| 29|
11h | 48| 19196| 400| 809| 35|
12h | 31| 10516| 339| 788| 19|
13h | 26| 12090| 465| 993| 23|
(*=max)
Thank you for contacting us!
We look forward to working you in 2022!
73s de DA0FF
