QTH: Hornisgrinde (JN48CO)

Still on the Hornisgrinde, we tried a new location this time. We set the station up roughly 13 meters below the summit, near the south slope, and of course we were aware of what that would mean to our contest results. As a test for future projects and in order to see how big the influences of the new location will be we did not change a lot, but installed a new 4x5el group to the south. We started our trip to JN48CO on Friday morning in time (well, that's worth to mention :-) and in the evening two towers were installed and the station itself was ready. The other two towers were installed on Saturday morning. We used three 4x5el DK7ZB yagi groups, one to the east, one to the south and one to NNW. To the north we installed a 20el cushcraft. For our 2nd operator we installed a 17el longyagi. The first operator worked with an IC-765 connected to a TR-144H (DB6NT Transverter) which in turn was connected to a HL350vdx, the driver PA to our HA8UG GS35b PA. The second operator worked with an IC-756proII connected to a LT2S Transverter. The power was supplied by a 10kVA mobile diesel genset.

As you can imagine by looking at the picture, we had a hard time struggling with the weather. We experienced water in many different physical conditions: fog, rain, snow, hail, with and without wind and storm. Everyone of us was completely soaked.

The station was ready and we completed every test well in time. To the NNW we had the summit of the Hornisgrinde in the line of sight and the view to the E was partially obstructed by high trees and military installations. In these directions we had to use the 17el longyagi very often because this antenna was installed at the highest point. In contrast: In Mai 2004 we only used the longyagi for a couple of QSOs. While we increased our QSO rate to the north by 25% (because of no obstructions), the rate dropped below 50% to the E and NNW. Therefore we did not perform very well towards NNW and E. Of course we were aware of these problems prior to the contest, but we did not expect that they would hit us that hard.

At 21:15 UTC the microphone of our Heil ProSet+ Headset broke and generated a constantly high NF noise level. It took us a couple of minutes till the failure was isolated. We went back to the air and finished the contest with a standard Icom microphone.

Except for DK0OX who produced splatter of +/- 200 kHz, we were not disturbed by other stations (and of course we hope we did not disturb any other).

Thanks a lot for the QSOs and see you again on 144.225 MHz.