CQ WAG - Worked All Germany - Contest 2018

DG7LAN did work his first contest from beginning to the end. That was something. Ok, I have to admit that I slept in between. But just for 1 hour ;) I worked from the rear seat of my Jeep as I often do. The setup was the following:

• ICOM 7300
• Notebook with N1MM (love it)
• manual VCI ATU (mainly to switch between the antennas)
• Kelemen dipol for 80m/40m/20m 35m over ground
• 40m inverted L with automatic tuner (worked well for 80/40 locals)
• Hanuta and CocaCola

There was a total of 881Qs and a claimed score of 216258. But I am sure there are a few 0 scores in the log since I did CW for the first time in contest and most likely messed up some of the exchanges ;) I don't care, room to improve.

My antennas were supported by some really huge trees. Thanks to mother nature! On the pictures you see the dipole with the support point for the inverted L. 

Unfortunately I had to work LOW POWER since I didn't manage to get my 'new' Ameritron AL811H running in time. 

Conclusions:

• N1MM rocks!
• The IC7300 does well in crouded environment and on busy band
• If you put out a strong signal and have a nice run, there is always the one guy that tries to interfere. Thank god, most guys just push a carrier or CW for a few minutes and then move on. Thats easily eliminated by the notch in the 'IF' path. 
• It's ok to sleep an hour at night. The bands got really quiet and there were only stations I worked before. That was close past midnight. 

Bad picture of the dipol

Bad picture of the dipol - hard to see

As one can see, I did some CW in the last 3 hours and had a great run. Many OPs were really patient and some even slew down a little. I love it. 

Upcoming weekend: CQ WW SSB! CU!

CQ WW DX Contest RTTY portable

On Sunday I did participate in the CQ WW RTTY Contest for the first time. I usually don't do RTTY at all so it was kind of challenging to set it all up. In the end it was real fun and I had a few nice runs but most of the time I did S&P. 

The setup was: N1MM with MMTTY, a single USB cable to the ICOM IC 7300, RG58 to the HLA300V, 30m RG58 to my triband dipole at 30m between two huge trees.

After the first testruns holy smoke came out of the HLA300. A capacitor broke into two pieces and so I had to compete with 100W from the Icom. If you own a HLA300 be careful on RTTY! (Pro Tip :D )

After 10 hours of RTTY I went QRT, got down the antenna and drove back home. 

That was a nice contest to prepare for the upcoming CQ WW SSB contest. I now have a list with things to prepare, change and to carry with me. (I.e. a head lamp to get down the antenna in the dark) 

CU in contest! 
73 / Andy

DG7LAN/mm

Some of you may ask:

What does DG7LAN/mm mean. 

Thats me, cruising with my small 27 foot yacht playing HAM Radio

Locations include the river Elbe, north sea, baltic sea. 
I really enjoyed doing CW in the last days. Thank you guys for all the nice contacts and thanks for being patient and not minding me asking 'AGN' and 'AGN' :D

The rig used is the ICOM IC 7300, 9m of wire and a chinese automatic tuner CG 3000. I usually don't run more than 100 Watts - that drains batterys fast enough and I simply don't want to let the engine run for hours to recharge. 

I am already looking forward to the upcoming weekend to meet you guys on the air. 
73s, Andy

Anchorage @ Pagensand Island

The IC7300, key, Coke, JTDX :)

Extended 'radial' in the water

Anchorage for the night

Portable in St.Peter Ording

Yesterday we (Martin, DL8LBY and I) went out for some portable activity. The first stop was at a (closed for maintenance - ignored) view tower. We had to climb some fences to get there and eventually we went upstairs. Martin mounted the portable antenna and we managed to tune on 20m with the Yaesu FT817. Just after the 2nd CQ call the local authorities showed up and we had to leave the tower. Welcome to Germany. 

My first CW QSOs!!

Last night I made my first contacts in CW on 20m and 40m. Of cause from the mobile :) I felt like a little kid trying to learn to speak. Or better: Trying to learn to understand. I have no problems on TX. The HIMOUND Manipulator feels great for me and integrates nicely into the IC7300s CW setting. I set it to 13wpm by the way. Some OMs responded to my call with the same speed, some simply where "fast" - for me at least :) I do imagine how the OMs on the other hands sat with a shaking head because I had to reask callsigns and things over and over but in the end - hey, there was a QSO, a nice report and a "73". I will keep it up and eventually be one of the QRQ guys...maybe ;)

My special thanks for the operators on the other side: LZ1YP 9A2UU SM3UZU OM3LL IZ3KG

Next time I will be a lot faster!

New kid in town - The HLA 300V mobile amplifier

Since my IC-7300 gives me an average peak power of around 70 watts, I was looking for a little more output power. The published ALC mod is a "no go" for me. I don't want to lose the warranty and I am not sure that the mod is a good idea at all. Here is my solution: The HLA 300v from RM Italy :) Love it. I will not come up with measurements or technical details. If you are interested, have a look at this: https://pa0fri.home.xs4all.nl/Lineairs/HLA300/hla300eng.htm
That's quite a lot of detail. For me the amp is just great because it has decent power, is quiet (the fans didn't make much noise,yet) and should give a clean output. In fact it quadruples my power from 70w to 280w easily. Let's see how this turns out in future. 

The hidden power of FT8

The new fascinating digital mode FT8 took off like a rocket. But do people know the real power of FT8? To be honest, I didn't. Today I was in the mobile and the band was absolutely dead. I mean really, not a single station heard on 20m SSB. But what about FT8? I tuned to 14.074. Nothing. Maybe there is something. A really quiet tone in the noise. Not sure. I gave it a try. Turned decode mode to "deep" (usually I am on "fast") and... surprise!

South America showed up. Remember: I was in the car with the 30bucks antenna. Nearly nothing to hear from the speaker but W-SJTX was decoding like hell!! 

And then... tada! KC4AAA from Antarctica showed up. For those who don't know: That's the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station. That's 14500km from my position!

I gave it a try and he confirmed me immediately. Fantastic.. Remember: From the car, cheap antenna and a windows tablet :) 

Conclusion: With the right propagation FT8 rocks. With bad propagation FT8 rocks even more! 

If you didn't try it yet, go to https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx.html and start NOW!!