HAM meets military

  I have been writing before that in some situations we as licensed HAMs can talk with military operators. In "peace" time this is just an exercise. In "war" time this can be handy in some situations were information can be exchanged about the enemy or target locations. 

I could have written about the todays event before. Unfortunately they had chosen April's fools day. Many operators would think it is was a joke. I've been thinking the same and so I was a bit cautious. But this morning it was evident that the event was no joke and stations were really there.

Just to be shure I brought my portable 60m gear with me to the job to get active at lunchbreak.

Transceiver was my FT-817 with 5W and the magnetic loop on a tripod. Unfortunately no military stations were heard, probabely they had a lunchbreak as well.

I made only one QSO with another portable station who was trying to do the same as me. It was PE1COS Hans who was about 25km from my QTH. The QSO went well even with only 5W output. It was a good test to see what my range is even that nearby. And just with a small MLA.

Back home on the full size doublet and with 100W output I worked PA04MIL QTH: Willemstad on 60m, PA07MIL QTH: Poederoijen on 60m, PA01MIL QTH: Zeewolde (old RNW site) on 60m and PA08MIL QTH: Hoek van Holland (probabely the PI4CC contestsite) on 80m. Some stations were manned by military personnel and I was told by one station he was using a Harris radio with 400W output. Signals were good. I did hear some other MIL stations on 40m but they were too weak to work. Given the current events in Ukraine it was a interesting excersise for both HAMs as for the military ops I think. I captured some on video. It is in Dutch so it might be less interesting for foreign readers.

VarAC now with full CAT control

 

Have posted about VarAC before. One of the disadavantages have been resolved now. the program doesn't need Omnirig and/or any fancy splitter anymore. It can directly be controlled by CAT control from within the software. This makes it way easier for many people to use...

#CQWW WPX SSB 2022 contest review

Event: CQWW WPX SSB 2022
Section: SOAB assisted
Logger: N1MM+ 
Station: Icom IC-7300 (100W)
Antenna 1: 160m sloper
Antenna 2: 10m LFA @14m
Antenna 3: Multiband vertical @16m
Antenna 4: 2x20m inverted-V doublet

 

A historical WPX contest since Russian and Belarussian stations were not counting for point or multipliers. This due to the war in Ukraine. I worked only one Russian station. No other Russians were heard except for some that talked to each other well below 14130 KHz. A very strange experience since normally the 20m band would be crowded with Russian stations early in the morning. 

I didn't work VK (Australia) last year in this contest and actually it seems I always struggle to hear and work VK in contests. But this year they were on the band and I worked a couple of them on 20m and 10m. As a matter of fact propagation was very good Saturday morning with not only VK coming in strong but also  a couple of stations from Hawaii. They were really RS59 at times, captured AH7C in the video below. I concentrated on working DX and multipliers this year and work less Europeans. There is a difference in points. 160-40m 2 points for non-DX and 6 points for DX, 20-10m 1 point for non-DX and 3 points for DX. So it makes a considerable difference if you aim for DX. Besides that I'm not really a contester, I really like to work DX. It went well this year, contacts all over the globe. Although I missed some DX as well. I still receive far more as I can reach with my 100W transmitter. For instance I heard some stations from ZL (New Zealand) and KL7 (Alaska) but they didn't hear me although their signals were at a reasonable strength. On 10m I heard 9N7AA from Nepal with real RS59 (captured on video) I called many times but was unable to work him. I also heard V47T, V31XX, PJ4R and PJ2T on 10m, not really strong but I could understand them well. Unfortunately they probabely all work with a minimum of 1 KW so I had no chance at all. No problem since a lot of other nice DX could be worked well. I was astonished by the strong signals from V31XX (Belize) and V47T (ST.Kitts & Nevis) on 40m, real RS57-9 at times and really easy to work with my system. 

The fun in this contest for me are two things. Working pile-ups on 80m and working unexpected DX and have some chats in between the busy contest traffic. Since my doublet 2x20m inverted-V does well on 80m it is a real pile up creator. No problem to attract stations. Should I try to do a single (80m) band effort in the future? I didn't spend much time on 80m this year because I wanted to work DX on the higher bands. The real surprise for me was a nice chat with Paul 3B8HE (G8AFC) I was clear enough at that memorable moment to capture most of the contact on video.