Friday, October 28, 2011

A long activation of Nunspeet - PAFF-033

Using three different bands for short and long distance QSOs

Wednesday October 26 I had planned an activation of PAFF-033. The difference with other activations up till now was that I had quite a bit of time on my hands and that I knew a few days ahead that I would use this time for an activation.



Using Google Maps I had already checked out the area for a good operating spot. I had found a few spots and it turned out that the first one I went for was good enough. The area is mainly covered by a dense forest, which is not the best condition for a radio operation. I found a bit of space, just enough to keep the antenna free from the trees on the northern part of the park.

I was visited twice by park attendants. This surprised me somewhat as the park is not a high profile park at all. The first one did not understand what I was doing but decided it would not be harmful for the park. The second one turned out to be an inactive HAM.. small world.

Station set-up @ PAFF-033

Conditions
The previous days I had had a lot of fun on 10 meters (my favourite band) so I decided to start there and see how many hunters would be present there. As I hoped, there were a number of DX stations calling in (US, Canada, Brazil and I stumbled upon PJ5) - 10m is great for DX. PY1SX set the maximum QRB for the day (9600km).

For Europe the conditions on 10m weren't that great so after one and a half hours (and only 33 contacts) I went down to 20m. This is a very busy place for WFF. I worked 192 stations in just over 2 hours. As always most of the OM's were from Russia (EU and Asiatic), Italy and Ukraine. A few DX stations came by as well - JH8, UA0, UA9, VE6, UN9 and 4Z. 
Quite a few of the WFF hunters have become familiar callsigns, some are in my log for all my 6 activations.

When 20m started to get slow, around 18:30 local time, I decided to give 40m a try. It was a challenge to find a quiet spot but when I did I worked 69 stations in one hour. 40m nicely closes the skip gap 20m and 10m leave behind (between 250 - 700km).

At 20:00 I closed down the station and headed back home. By that time I had greeted 288 OMs (some came by on more than one band - some even on all three - hi Luciano :) from 43 different DXCC entities.

Thanks all for stopping by and calling in. See you at the next activation.
Lars, PH0NO/P 

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