VHF Contest May 2019

Having been a little bit too lazy and frightened by the bad weather in March this was going to be our first contest of the year.

Like always much work had to be done during the winter break. The biggest task had been to replace our former 70cm tower with 4x4x9 elements on top of it. That tower was heavyly overloaded and has now been replaced with a sophisticated triangular lattice tower which is much stronger than the old construction.

Tim (DK5OH) and Max (DK5MX) had spent many hours working on this tower and we erected it on Friday afternoon. Being supported by some experienced BCC members (Mark DK2CX, Mario DJ2MX, Sven DJ4MX) form Bavaria, we fortunately could erect all 5 antenna systems on that day. Moreover we were supported by Lorenz (DL6NCI) who wanted to participate from 1.2 to 47Ghz from top of the Wasserkuppe. Thank you Lorenz!

Everything seemed perfect except the weather forecast. It got colder and colder and started snowing throughout the night. Consequently all antennas were covered in ice on Saturday and had turned into beautiful sculptures but useless rotatable aluminium.

Luckily it stopped snowing and after a quite successful 3-hour deicing mission we were ready to start.

Louis (DK4EE) arrived in time and completed the team, so we could enjoy our classy Wasserkuppe barbecue together.

Conditions were extremely flat to non-existent during the contest but surprisingly we could extend our own QSO record during the first hour to 149 QSOs on 144Mhz.

We started on 432Mhz with a delay of 45min after deicing the 4x4x9el.

Fortunately we could manage a nice MS QSO in SSB with LZ7J in KN22HB (QRB: 1461km)

144Mhz and 432Mhz worked like a charm (no icing problems during the contest) and the QSO numbers rose. On Sunday we got some more support by Stefan (DL2OCB), Alex (DL8AAU), Martin (DL8RI) and finally there were 3x24GHZ and 2x47Ghz stations on top of the Wasserkuppe. This was real Ghz activity :-)

Claimed score:

144 Mhz

Valid QSO: 1014

Points:        325944

ODX:          LZ7J KN22HB (1461km)

432 Mhz

Valid QSO: 405

Points:        122535

ODX:          9A8D JN95LM (867km)

1.2 Ghz

Valid QSO: 10

Points:        2677

ODX:          IK3GHY JN65DM (578km)

2.3 Ghz

Valid QSO: 10

Points:        2181

ODX:          IK3GHY JN65DM (578km)

3.4 Ghz

Valid QSO: 7

Points:        1749

ODX:          OE5VRL/5 JN78DK (387)

5.7 Ghz

Valid QSO: 2

Points:        251

ODX:          DG8NCO JO50VH (132km)

10 Ghz

Valid QSO: 6

Points:        987

ODX:          OE5VRL/5 JN78DK (387km)

24 Ghz

Valid QSO: 3

Points:        275

ODX:          DK0NA JO50TI (119km)

47 Ghz

Valid QSO: 2

Points:        81

ODX:          DH6FAE/P JO40PL (48km)

73s de DA0FF

(DK2CX, DK4EE, DL6FBL, DK5OH, DK5MX, DL2ZXA, DL4XX, DJ4MX, DJ2MX, DL6NCI, DL2OCB, DL8RI)