Operated in the Mother’s Day + Visitors 12 hour category so didn’t manage to make the full 12 hours and certainly didn’t have my complete choice of operating times, so some important openings – especially the one to Western VE on 15/20 during our evening. Just over 11 hours in the end.

Conditions not as good as hoped – especially on 10m on Saturday – with the band barely opening to VE. Sunday morning there was a nice opening to VK. On Saturday evening on 20m and 40m, some signals were almost completely auroral – and noticeably rougher when listening with the Rx antenna pointed North. I also thought that activity was down a bit this year.

A nice 80m opening to VK at their sunrise, but only ZL3AB on 80m at their sunset – though he was a good signal.

Only two wire dipole antennas again and more compromise with the configurations this year forcing me to use the poorer lower antenna too much on 40 and 15 and the manual tune amp to handle the 4:1 SWR on some bands – but hopefully enough worked in the end.

Many thanks to everyone for the QSOs, and especially to those who kindly moved for me when asked.

2 x K3 + Ten Tec Titan + Alpha 87A. 1kW.
Inv-V Dipole for 80 & 20 + 3WL/2 on 40m @ 20m + Inv-V Dipole @ 12m for 40m. K9AY

73

Andy, G4PIQ