This contest shows picture of definitive „good bye“ from Cycle 24.
I started on 40m, but deep night was time of closing of this band. I early QSY to 80m, and this was good decision to hold quite high QSO number for 3 hours. I was able to have good rates also on 40m on early morning. I wanted to stay on 40m as long as it was possible. Due to 2 points EU and due to expectation of bad conditions on high bands. Moving to 20m and 15m was struggle for every QSO. 10m without any opening, 15m without longer pileup, so-so on 20m. Very early closing of high bands. Saturday evening quite better rates on 40m. Night again with miserable 40m, so I spent night on 80m and 160m. Sunday break I started earlier just on morning, which was good idea. Sunday afternoon was quite nice on both, 20m and 15m, much more better than day before. With few pileups and few interesting west and east openings on 15m. Band looked like just before closing but east gave few piles of valuable mults from exact directions (YB, YC, 9M, BY…). At least one short 10m opening, but with only little score addition. Fortunately, 15m and 20m closed much later, than on Saturday.
Sometimes I have serious problems with bands covered by one splatter spectrum beside other. No rare +/- 5 kHz… Especially on 20m after closing of 15m – there wasn’t problem to find frequency with no station, but reason was clear – enormous splatter QRM. Some signals was similar to few kHz wide bulldozer… I had to playing with filters, attenuator, preamplifier… Situation is getting worse from year to year.
The main problem for years of Solar activity minimum is 20m and 15m antennas. My 3 element tribander is just small water pistol toy. Looking to big guns score shows, that 20m was their main band, not rare together with 15m. My „home station“ resources for building high bands arrays are limited, so difficult years are comming, hi.
Thanks to all participants, for patience during QSBs.
Final score: 3 389 832 Category: SO AB HP Rank: WW #81 EU #37 OM #2
Call: OM7RU
Operator(s): OM7RU
Station: OM7RU
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Dolna Micina
Operating Time (hrs): 36:00
Location : Northern Europe
Summary:
Band QSOs -------------------------------------------------- 160: 103 80: 481 40: 589 20: 384 15: 216 10: 9 -------------------------------------------------- Total: 1782 Prefixes: 836 Total Score: 3,499,496
Used equipments:
Yaesu FT-1000MP MarkV Field
ACOM 2000A (1,5 kW OUT)
MicroHAM microKeyer, MicroHAM StationMaster
WinTest
UltraBeam UB ONE rotator
Antennas:
160m: Vertical (35m tower + 2 elevated radials)
80m: OptiBeam OB1-80 rotary dipole @34m
40m: InvVee @21m
RX loop (TX3A design)
20, 15, 10m: Cushcraft A4S 3 el. tribander @31m
73!
Riki, OM7RU
www.tucek.sk/om7ru