Denmark holiday

Actually I'm glad we are back home safe. As driving the German autobahn is almost suicide without any speedlimits. Imagine you're driving 120-130 km/h (80 mph) and it's like you're almost not moving at all with all those crazy Audi, Mercedes and Porsche drivers overtaking you with speeds of 250-300 km/u (180 mph). It's really crazy and in my opinion a traffic nightmare. Anyway, we had a very nice holiday in Denmark last week. A quiet country compared to the Netherlands and Germany. Normal speedlimits on the roads and everyone keeping those limits and very polite people also in traffic. We stayed near Bork Havn a small town at the Ringkobing fjord. We made trips around the fjord to several places and visited Esjberg, Ribe and Tonder as well. Not to forget we visited Legoland in Billund of course. The weather was not that good unfortenately but we had fun anyway.

Radiowise I brought my FT-817 and Superantenna MP-1. The MP-1 was mounted on the Hama tripod and hardly survived the snow and high winds. But this small antenna was amazing again. With only 1W WSPR on 30m I was heard in New Zealand at ZL1RS, several stations in Australia, USA and Canada. But the Netherlands was too close. Yes I received PA4O who is also in the northern part of the Netherlands and close to my homeQTH, but he was almost the only one. So I decided to go for 40m and received PA4O again as well as PA4GB who lives nearby my homeQTH. Fellowblogger PC4T was received on 40m as well. Unfortenately PE1BVQ Hans who was really looking for me was not received by me in Denmark. However, he did receive my signal with a respectable -19dB. It was my plan to activate my W5OLF WSPR transmitter at home to see if I could receive it. But unfortenately something went wrong and I only found out when I was in Denmark. I don't know exactly what went wrong but the transmitter did not send any signal or the timing was wrong. Well, you can't have everything and I don't think I was able to receive the signal anyway. I tried to make some maps from the log. But it seems the wsprmap at http://wspr.aprsinfo.com/ does not accept extended prefixes like OZ/. The map on WSPRnet.org does I think but only goes back 24 hours. I've made some JT65, JT9, PSK31 and PSK63 contacts as well, but no shocking DX. Just for the fun of it. I was active on 20m for a few ours last Friday and packed late in the afternoon.

Well, it was a nice experience. I've learned a few things again. I should buy a smaller and lightweight power supply for the FT-817. The one I brought this time was too heavy. And I have to make some mods to mount of the the Superantenna MP-1. It really is not made for being in high winds. Another big thing is the digimodem, doing a fine job but it should be smaller. The laptop I have is just good enough for WSPR but has problems with JT65/JT9. FLdigi however, as PSK software, did a great job on my old laptop.

The holiday was great. And we certainly want to visit Denmark again.