va2wdq
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Re:Sweepstakes 2008 - 2008/11/03 11:34
Félicitation à tous!
I hope we gave QC to everyone during the contest))
Claude you are right the 80m band was unbelievable good during the first night. I have started the contest on 20m S/P but couldn't get a good rate. The propagation was not good. Then I have QSY to 40m. The same thing! Strange but on 40 it was also very hard to get every QSO. So the rate after 2 hours was really low - just 36 QSO/hour. But then I QSY to the 80m I got real joy. So the rate was never coming down 60 QSO/hour. Sometimes it was up to 110 QSO/hour! So I went to sleep at around 02:30 PM with 400 QSO in the log.
Next day was great for all other bands except 80m ))) The 20m was absolutely amazing before 8PM. I tried to repeat the Saturday's rate but it was impossible. 80m was noisy and it was a challenge to get every exchange. And there were not too many players.
That was my first SS. The EXCHANGE looks really awkward and it's not easy to RX/TX. I think that will be more errors in EXCHANGE than in other tests. After first hour I got bad rate on 20m - 36QSO/hour and I wanted to quit. But I have decided to continue but just in a relaxing mode (more time on CQ then S/P) as to get a good practice before CQ WW. I didn't work all 24 hours. I took one extra hour for sleep. And took one hour for a beautiful Sunday dinner with a bottle of wine prepared by my girlfriend.
J-P:
I'm using simple Inverted L 9 meters up in the highest point. I live in a "restricted" area (restricted by my girlfriend and neighbor ). So I can't erect something toller then 10 meters. Anyway last summer I have put my 2 el. yagi to 11m when anybody was out. But that's a big secret tssssss....!))))
The Inv L is optimized especially for 80m with MMANA software. I have a remote switching match for 160m and 40 m. So I use just only one Inv L (one wire over our backyard - that's for my girlfriend ) for 3 bands 160-80-40 with swr around 1:1.0 on cw portion of the bands. With tuner it works as a surrogate antenna on 30m and 20m as well.
PS: I was really in shock that almost half of the SS participants gave theres CK which are before my birthday (1964) ! Who going to be in the contest in 2018 ?!
73!
Victor
Post edited by: va2wdq, at: 2008/11/04 12:22
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