Sunday, May 26, 2013

The CQ WPX CW is over.

As I'm trying to write this... I'm struggling... The CQ WPX CW just finished and Steve VK3TDX and I VK2PN are very tired but delighted.

         Band    QSOs    Pts      WPX
         3.5      13           70      2
           7       237        1387   41
          14     930        2754   398
          21     674       1952    274
          28     356       1036    115
       Total    2210    7199     830


            Score : 5,975,170




Steve's "magic bullet" the rhombic....  Worked pretty well



The "boys" hard at work
48 hours in the chair with very little rest/sleep.

Coffee is coming
Unfortunately we had Murphy to visit us... My K3 packed in after about 20 hours of operating.  It may have inhaled an unhealthy dose of RF into the front end...  Luckily I had the Little K3 with me and I jerry rigged the station to be able to do the job.


I'd like to thank the Manly Warringah Radio Society (my radio club) for a loan of the traps.  Without those we would not be able to transmit at the same time.

Also thanks Trent VK4TS for the tip of using the sugar free Red Bull drink... Yes it works.
Using the KX3 as a main rig... not bad.

Here is the happy team - operators and support after the contest.

Glass of bubbly to all.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

CQ WPX CW contest with Steve VK3TDX

Hi All...

Steve was very gracious to invite me to his QTH for the contest:

 We are both in "pre contest" attitude and practicing.  The computers are set and the anticipation level is high.

I'm sure we are going to have lots of fun.... Please give us a call...

Good luck to all

73

Steve and Patrick

Monday, May 20, 2013

Thursday, May 16, 2013

VK2PN as AX2PN on 17th May - World Telecommnication day

Australian station are able to operate under the AX call on:

(a) 26 January;
(b) 25 April;
(c) 17 May.


Today is 17th May the World Telecommunication day I've dusted off the AX2PN call and operated on 20 m LP to Europe for about one and a half hour.



Good fun, but the brain is still fogged up with jet-lag from yesterday (about 18 hours on a plane between Santiago de Chile and Sydney) and more than 24 hours without sleep.

QSOs were uploaded to eQSL and Club log.

No of QSOs = 104 Operating split - huge dogpile.






What a coincidence...??

Home for the first day... badly jet-lagged but happy.

Turned the radio on to "test it"..  and worked on a first call HD8A Galapagos:





DX expedition of Alex HD2A and Alberto HC2AQ are active from the Galapagos islands as HD8A for 4 days starting May 15th.

Now in retrospect I'm sorry that I did not take my little KX3 and did not try some operating.

The results of the Commonwealth contest were published.

  As I member of the team Australia 2, I was quite pleased with the result.