[Moon] [Moon-Net] G3LTF microwave contest results

[Skip Macaulay]

Hello again Peter.. I agree with you that last weekend's contest is
pathetic.. But I was surprised how many were on 13cm even on the second
pass..
I did manage to work 10 stations if I recall, a few first ones also for
me.. I wanted to put the 9 cm feed on for the second pass here but the
weather was just awful, raining like crazy.. I didn't want to put the amp
up there in case the moisture snuck into it.. Still having the 13CM feed on
the second go around was good.. Still not that busy though..  Peter, here
is something for you to look at.. You might find it interesting, my first
attempt..  Skip

https://youtu.be/QrB1TQHEdgY



On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 4:10 PM Peter Blair via Moon-net <
moon-net at mailman.pe1itr.com> wrote:

> For me this was the most dissapointing microwave contest yet, even
> including those with bad weather. Partly my fault as I didnt get on until
> 0100 Z at the start on 13cm and then miss-set the alarm so by the time I
> got on again at 05.00 any US stations had, very reasonably, gone to bed.
> However, the main reason is that, with the increased activity on 3cm,
> fitting 4 bands into 30 hours of moon time just does not work. The strategy
> for a good score has been to be to be active on as many bands as possible
> so that the multipliers add up (I always try to use all the 3 bands I
> have,13,9 and 6cm, 3cm is still WIP) but that doesnt work now that a lot of
> the activity seems to be on one band.
> After F2TU’s terrible accident no-one wants to change feeds in the middle
> of the night anymore, however easy you make that. Multi-band feeds and
> transmitters at a prime focus is really hard except on pretty rugged dishes
> (and which bands would you choose and yes, I know a 4m offset would be the
> ideal answer)
>
> This isnt a gripe, just an observation and a suggestion. Splitting one of
> the traditional 50-1296MHz weekends is not at all popular (and it wont
> happen)  but why not take two adjacent weekends for the microwave section,
> 6 and 13cm one weekend for example and 3 /1.25 and 9cm the other?
> We could have done that this year by using the two consecutive weekends in
> October 23/24 and 30/31, their characteristics, declination and loss and
> sun spacing are very similar.
> Next year is a really difficult year for finding good contest weekends but
> we could use October 15/16 and 22/23. October 22/23 has declination 8 deg
> dropping to –1deg, but with 2 bands per weekend, not 4, at least there is a
> higher chance of making more contacts.
> I know there was a lot of activity on 3cm but thats not the point, we
> really want to encourage activity on all the bands and people with just one
> or two bands want to know, ahead of time, not on Friday afternoon, when
> there will be activity.
> For the record I worked 7 !! on 13cm (normally 20-30) 9 on 6cm ( +1 heard)
> and 1 on 9cm (+1 heard) and with all the effort of changing 3 feeds and
> taking the gear up and down to the dish this is pretty close to a waste of
> time and effort, but of course, thanks to all for the QSOs.
> 73 Peter G3LTF
>
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-- 
Skip Macaulay
VE6BGT