Well this didn’t start very well. Watching the antennas thrash about in a violent hailstorm on Friday afternoon I noticed that one of the capacity loading wires on the 40 rotary dipole had snapped.
No chance of repair before the start as its at 70 ft right at the top of the tower stub mast. Wworse the broken wire was draped over the 20m yagi.
I managed to find a spare 40m dipole and rigged it up a sloper but it didn’t seem to hear very well at all.

Mentally this was not a good start. Anyway here is a band by band summary.

10m. What a dramatic change from 2022! Really good signals from VK/ZL.
There seemed to have been some sort of disturbance as it didn’t sound quite as good as it did last week but that said, it improved as the day wore on, even some ZS activity too.

Worked. 5B, 5Z, 6Y, 8P, 9G, 9H, 9J, 9Z, AP, V2, VE1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9. VK2, 3, 4, 5, 6. VO1, 2. VU2, ZD7, ZF, ZL1, 2, 3 ZS1, 6.

15m. Sounded in really good shape. Suspect it might have been open to somewhere all night.

Worked. 5B, 5Z, 6Y, 9G, 9H, V2, V4, VE1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9. VK2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 7 VO1, 2. VY1, ZD7, ZF, ZL2, 3, 4

20m. Was very noisy the whole contest which made things pretty unpleasant. LP and SP on VK/ZL at the same time. Lot of antenna turning on the weaker signals.

Worked. 5B, 5Z, 6Y, 9G, 9H, 9J, VE 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9. VK2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 7 VO1, 2. ZF, ZL2, 3, 4

40m. Managed to work some of the stronger stations but I realised I had a problem when I couldn’t even hear some of the DX being worked easily by others.

Worked. 6Y, 9Z, VE3, VK2,4 ZF, ZL3

80m. Conditions were well down compared with last week when I was able to work Barry VK2BJ quite easily. Nil at UK sunset.

Worked VE3, ZF only

Set up K4D + amp, HF yagi, 40 sloper, 80 vertical. NCC-2 for noise nulling.

73 and many thanks to the travellers and the HQs

Bob G3PJT