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VHF Contest May 2016

final result
final result
Team f.l.t.r.: DL4XX, DK2CX, DL2ZXA, DL6FBL, DK5OH, DK5MX
Team f.l.t.r.: DL4XX, DK2CX, DL2ZXA, DL6FBL, DK5OH, DK5MX

 

After the fight against the elements in March we looked forward for the May contest. Surprisingly the Wasserkuppe’s summit was not swathed in dense fog this time which was quite an unusual experience for us. Actually the clerk of the weather was on our side and welcomed us with bright sunshine and temperatures well above 20° Celsius. Amazing!

 

 

Most of the team had already met on Friday morning and assembling the station in the sunshine was a real joy. After putting up the normal 4 antenna masts for 144Mhz we finally erected our 432Mhz antenna system which consisted of 4 x9, 4 x 9, 1 x 13 and 1 x 13 yagis which were evenly spread around the compass rose on one single mast with a rotator at the bottom. After this hard work we deserved some classy barbecuing in the evening .

 

 

Right in time before the beginning of the contest everything worked flawlessly and the contest could begin. QSO rates were significantly higher than in March but similar to that event there were not any conditions at all but the QSO number rose steadily and the local QRM level was ok.

 

Hours passed and everything worked as expected when we suddenly observed this smell that no radio amateur really likes- the stench of burning semiconductors or cables -which was accompanied by the immediate tripping our final amplifier’s protection circuit. After checking everything for the problem without any results we reactivated the amplifier and everything was fine again.

 

Noteworthy to mention is that we killed our 70cm transistor final on Sunday morning but fortunately this amplifier could be replaced by a spare one. This untimely death of a 50 Volt LD-Mosfet was probably caused by a loose connector at one of our 4-way antenna power splitters. Consequence: Never rely on any SWR protection circuits or “indestructible” LD-Mosfets.

 

 

At 14.00 UTC we ended with 912 QSOs and carefully claim 305353points on 144Mhz and 297 QSO and 86053 points on 432Mhz. We finally disassembled the station in bright sunshine and left the volcano’s summit at 18.00 UTC.