Summer holiday 2005 from JP74

This summer was no exception from other summers. A trip to the familys cottage in the mountins was done. Activities this time was on 50MHz and 144MHz. The 50MHz activities was split between me (SM3RPQ) and my father (SM3RPP) as always. On 144MHz the "local" repeater was of cource activated but main focus was on FSK441/MS. Additionally one QSO was logged on AU after QSY from 50MHz.

50 MHz

We arrived on the evening of thursday July 14. That meant it was the night of the 50MHz NAC. However as we had loaded all things out of the car and into the house the clock was already 21 local time. That meant half the contest had passed. Mounting and erecting the beam takes close to two hours and was out of the question due to the insects aswell. However the dipole was mounted on a the boom for some long gone 2m antenna and the construction was leaned towards the front of the house. SWR close to 3 but the tuner in my TS-2000 accepted it. Indeed there was an ES opening but some calling still did not result in any QSOs.

The next day we mounted the antenna properly and as usual the SWR was close to 1. No ES opening this day but towards the evening there was some aurora. The beacons at Svalbard and Bear Island boomed in via AU-E but no activity. Three QSOs (with two stations) were completed as OH8MBN and OH8GLZ appeared on the band. This gave new squares.

As the days went by so did the ES and AU openings. Looking back at the log QSOs were worked on 15,16,17,20,21,22,26,27,28 and 29th. During the afternoon of the 29th the antenna was again taked down and put into storage over the winter. So of the total 15 days of possible activity contacts were worked on 10. I would call that a good result. It also gave my father 15 new squares and one new DXCC (TA), me 14 new squares and two new DXCC (TA,YL). For more info on the claimed results on 50MHz, see my standings page.

144 MHz

When the 50MHz beam had been put up the 2m beam for MS was also set up at it's usual place. No rotator, no mast-mounted pre-amp or anything. Just the beam and about 20m of cable. With this set up 25 qsos were either attempted or completed. (19 good, 6 bad as far as I know).

The morning of the 16th, the day after the antenna was set up activity started. This was a saturday and good activity was expected. To some disappointment the only station found was PA5DD. Same thing next day, only one station logged, SP6IWQ. Over the next days one or two stations were worked with a few exceptions where up to four were worked.

One thing that struck me was the difficulty to find stations in eastern Europe. If I had the beam staright south or slightly east normally nothing was heard and no (or few) reponses to any CQs. Working soth-west almost always give many received pings and replys to CQ. Is the activity so bad in eastern Europe? Am I up too late? Normally I started activity sometime after 8 local time. (Yes, I was tired).

Another event that really made things go around in my head was when SP6GZZ called. I was calling CQ362 on .370 and listening on .362 as the procedure prescribes. Then I received a 27 from SP6GZZ on 362. I immediately stopped calling on 370 and went to 362 and responded with my report to him. Over the next minutes I received the report a few times more. Nothing strange about this. It has happened many times that I get loads of pings from other stations that do not seem to hear me. What then happend must be called strange. He reverted back to calling just SM3RPQ SP6GZZ SM3RPQ ... . What should I expect in this situation? Him listening on the wrong frequency, just not hearing me on 362 or what?

Another fun incident was with EI5FK. I had heard him calling me a few times but either during QSOs with other stations or in one case were I actually answered him the contact was not completed. I don't have internet or cluster access from this QTH. Since I really did want to work the IO51 square I had been thinking about who I should call to get in contact with Charlie. On the evening of the 28th however there was a ES opening towards sothwest and suddenly I heard EI5FK calling CQ-DX on 50.110 CW, well what do you do, I called him with QSY .130 SSB and we could finally set up a sked. We even tried the same evening but I did not hear a single ping. On the next day I did get a few pings but never got any confirmation that he got my report, so QSO not complete. I have heard about talk-back on the 70cm band for setting up microwave contacts but never ever have I heard about someone making a MS-sked on a 50MHz ES opening.

Lets look at the log.

When I came home I found an E-mail from Sanyi, HA6NQ asking for a sked. I'm very sorry that this could not be set up but as stated so many times before. I do not have internet access from my holiday QTH and even if I was active every single I was there this time the purpose of these trips are HOLIDAY. Therefore I am reluctant to set up skeds weeks in advance. Due to weather, ES-openings, visitors, uncertainty about travel days and other things I might not be able to be on at the sked time, which would make me feel bad.

For the next stay that I expect will be somewhere around the easter of 2006 I will try to bring an antenna for at least 14MHz so that perhaps skeds can be arranged on a day to day basis on the old VHF-net on 14.345. I'm not sure this is used anymore but I guess nothing stops me from listening there. I will also try to be a bit more active to the east. The first week I started every day with at least one hour second period CQ's in the sector SSE to S but got very little response from this. I did work two R stations but that was in the "wrong" period and I was called by RU1AA while beaming towards the British Islands. Unexpected but very welcome.

In total I have > 160Mb of audio recordings from the MS activities which I will go over during the autumn in order to perhaps publish some and to improve the log with additional information about the pings. It will also come in handy during demonstrations. If you are in the list above and want the recordings please let me know and I will try to send them via E-Mail.