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Out and About – Part 2
4 March 2014 | by Saturday was the total opposite of Friday. BM2LDT and I had the plan go out to the seaside to take both our KX3s out for a spin. I picked him up in my old clunker and we drove to a place called Qian Zhou-zi (前洲子 in PL05rf), between Danshui and San Zhi.
We got there a little after two in the afternoon (0600 UTC) and set up the MP1 on a stand and a Diamond RHM8B antenna on the car. Strangely enough it seemed there were no conditions, because there were only a few signals around and nobody came back to my calls. So instead we did some antenna measurements with an RigExpert analyzer. My el-cheapo VHF/UHF whip turned out to be very good on 2 meters, but not so good on 70 cm. The Diamond RHM8B was mounted on the car and could easily be brought into resonance. However, it didn’t didn’t perform as well as the MP1.
BM2LDT next to the car with the MP1 in the foreground.
Then 10 meters started to produce some European signals and the first one who answered was G4ELJ. Nice QSO, but in SSB. The CW portion was still empty and by the end of the afternoon I had logged another 4 SSB 10 meter QSOs: RU3GB, OT4A, DK3T and OZ2PBS. We also checked a SOTA activation on 24.950 MHz in Austria, but signals were too weak to copy. Still, the salt water boost I was hoping for did allow us to work Europe with only 10 Watts in SSB.
Right after my QSO with OT4A. It’s getting chilly now.
We hadn’t seen much of the sun all afternoon and by 0930 UTC it became rather chilly, so we packed up and went home. Being Dutch I always enjoy the smell of the sea, so despite a lack of some warm sunshine and loads of DX it was still a very worthwhile portable operation.
One Response to “Out and About – Part 2”
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- Matt W1MST, Managing Editor
Good morning Hans, the pictures do look great but I can see what you are saying about the overcast wether. Nice that you were able to get some contacts on 10m. Very nice shots of the day and it would be great to have even the over cast day up this way. It was -30C with the wind chill yesterday!
Mike