Sunday, August 9, 2009

MD 2009 QSO Party

Hello,

We'll the QSO party is now over and I met my personal goal of exceeding the minimum 50 Points required to receive a participant certificate. I operated QRP 100% of the time and accumulated a total of 396 Points, which included
both SSB and PSK31 on 20M and 40M. I learned that I have near zero capability on VHF/UHF as I had no MD contacts during the QSO party.
I got a chance to use my Off Center Fed 40M dipole antenna and my old stand by 20m dipole. While the dipole worked out great the MFJ-1910 mast did not work as well and was very disappointing for $79.

Overall, I made several great contacts from Europe (Germany [PSK31 Club Station] and Italy[ Light House]) to Indiana and everything else in between!

The first picture is of my setup in doors, the heat drove me in off the back porch. On the left is my FT-817ND which is connected using a Rigblaster NOMIC to the Dell Laptop on the right running DM780 Beta 5 for PSK31 on 14.070MHZ. My Macbook is directly to the right of the 817 and is running N3FPJ's contest logging software, which is well worth the $6 paid. In the background is my IC-735 which was
connected to my 40M OCF Dipole to monitor the other band while I worked 20M digital.

As you can see from my backyard, the new OCF dipole is almost invisible to the general eye. I'm working to add a small hook to the point of my house to attach a pulley that
will allow me to hoist my dipoles up further in the air. I currently have my dipole secured from my 2nd floor bath room window.
More photographs of my QSO Party setup can be found at KB3LMC's Ham Radio Photos.

Great fun, so will leave you with a couple of videos of my setup from this weekend.

73s,
--Chris



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