Summary of vk1wia contest
From: Andrew VK1DA
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2023 03:49:06 GMT
I operated again as a field station at the same place as last year, near Wee Jasper and about 40km WNW of Canberra.  It’s well elevated at 1179m ASL, grid subsquare is QF44IR.  Wx was hot in the day, cool at night, calm until late Sunday evening.  I dropped the antennas so I could sleep without worrying about a steel mast falling on my camper.  I had some problems with my intended radio and had to revert to the IC706 after an hour during which I only logged a handful of contacts. The 706 did much better.  When the lower bands seemed to be somewhat empty I took a look at 15m and found big signals from some of the UK stations, in particular GB5CC.  I also changed my antenna over to a linked dipole selected for 15m. For power I used a AGM battery which did ok, I boosted it during daylight hours with a 100w solar panel.  Eventually I logged 97 contacts and I hope my manual band changing in N1MM did not lose any. With only plain wire antennas or verticals you don’t have to worry about whether the signal path is LP or SP.  and the home brew vertical did very well, with s9 signals reported from some EA SOTA contacts I made in a lull in the contest around 0700 Sunday.  I actually had a run of 20 SOTA callers there, but the longest “run” in the contest was about 3.  Life is different on zero gain antennas and 100w.  But the HQ callsign probably gained a few responses that my own callsign might not have.  I tried to chase down all the VK ops I could find to make at least 1 contact and preferably more.  I think I got a few on 4 bands and several on 3 bands.  At one point I was hunting for one of the other VK HQ stations but only heard him working others.  My CQs were not always successful in gaining any contacts so I was generally better off in S&P mode. Thanks to Allan for inviting me to do this again, thanks all for the contacts.  73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2DA Op for vk1wia