[Moon] [Moon-Net] wonderful CW contest

[g4bao]

This was my first experience of a 23cm Dubus CW event and I had great fun!
I'm not sure why there is so much concern about the demise of CW, it seems
alive and well on 23cms! If only we could encourage more activity outside
the contests. Only surprise was the lack of Americans, I didn't hear one
the whole weekend!

Running just 120 Watts (my power seems a little down) to a 1.9m RF-Ham
design dish with the excellent SM6FHZ patch feed and a 0.2dB G4DDK VLNA23 I
worked 19 stations on CW and 2 on JT.

23cm Initials were HB9CW, SP7DCS,OK1CA,SP6JLW,OK1KIR,ES5PC,OZ4MM,F5SE/P on
CW plus G4DDK and ZS6JON on JT.

Notable "got aways" were PA3DZL, DL1YMK, DJ8FR, and DL6SH Jac was quite
weak, but the latter 3 of that list were stronger than many I worked but
just didn't hear me, despite endless calling. Most unusual!

I found that "search and pounce" worked much better for me, calling CQ
brought some QSOs and a couple of stations that were just too weak for me
to work, which made me question the reciprocity of the 3 in the list above,
or maybe it was just QRM?

The slow QSB was very different to what I've experienced on 13cm with the
fade rate being "just right" to take out Morse characters!

In all, great fun, and it made me think that the "demise of CW" that some
bang on about is just down to the problem even the terrestrial microwave
bands suffer from, namely  lack of people bothering to come on and
transmit, instead, checking the internet, seeing no activity and not
switching the rigs on!

73
John G4BAO



On 14 March 2016 at 09:55, Dominique Fässler <dfaessler at bluewin.ch> wrote:

> the Dubus EME contest was again the highlight of the year. Although I did
> not have the opportunity to work after noon and therefore did not work any
> stations along moon-set, I ended with 70 QSO in the log. Among them are
> rather small stations as 15:05 G4BAO 549/559 or 12:37 SP6GWN 529/OOO
> (10W/1,2m dish). A big bunch of never worked stations again! Since I
> stopped
> counting initials due to the insane mix-up of modes I just enjoy EME in its
> finest form: CW, ALL TRULY RANDOM, new calls popping up, and the absence of
> stress during the contest.
> The EME beacon ON0EME was on during the whole time and was among the
> strongest signals!
> 10 days ago I had a bad lightning just next to the dish into a HV line. The
> farmer as my host of the site had to replace almost everything like
> dishwasher, washing machine, audio and tv-set etc. The only damage at my
> rig
> was one of the sensor interfaces for El-control. It counted the wrong
> sense,
> so I had to mechanically turn it by 180 degrees... see attached picture..
> 73 HB9BBD/HB9CW
> Dominique
>
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