| Darren Collins (G0TSM) Mar 12 #21055 Following the rule change this year regarding antennas I dabbled with 12 Hours Low Power 100W-Assisted using my regular DXing antennas. 10M 4 ele Yagi at 14M 15M/20M Hexbeam at 17M 40M Inverted V dipole apex at 12M NW/SE, Rx antenna the 15/20 Hexbeam 80M Inverted V dipole apex at 12M NW/SE, Rx antenna K9AY. Logging was N1MM with a filtered cluster feed showing only Commonwealth Countries mixed with my personal skimmer, which couldn’t be filtered, so it still messed up the band map 🙁 My daughter had to go into Hospital on Saturday morning so I had to work around that and fix a leaky tap in the afternoon. I think I managed approx. 10 hours in total, although the operating periods were not all at optimum times. Dave ZL/G4BUO had a staggering sig on 40M, 9+5 here, off the end of my low dipole in our morning. I felt for Nigel at VP8TXF. As I was tuning around I heard him a few times trying to get the attention of G*s but I guess they were beaming VE so Nigel would have been in their nulls if they were using Yagis. ZL2AGY was a gent and stuck with me for quite a while to complete a 20M QSO right at the end of the contest where he was peaking from 280deg over North America. On 80M I have an S9+5 crackle which appeared in November so as predicted I didn’t hear much. The K9AY did help with a very brief copy on ZL6HQ. Thanks to the ops at the GB5CC/G*6XX HQ stations, a nice challenge to try and work these stations on the high bands on backscatter with 100W. The scores on the doors… |
G0TSM in the CC
13 Thursday Mar 2025