Merry Christmas and Happy new Year.

Dear Santa,

As you know I was a good boy the whole last year. I've attended quite
a few contests even the small ones just to give a few numbers to fellow
contesters. I've tried to chase any DX I could hear and thanks to you
 I even worked some of them.

My wish for the stocking is: I want my own freqency in the CW portion
of any HF bands. That will give me unfair advantage when I take toilet
and food break during the contest. I also need clear spot exactly
1.342 kHz above the DX frequency so I can call them without being QRMed.

The abovementioned frequencies should be free of QRM, QRN,LIDs and
DQRM as well.
Ah... almost forgot the XYL QRM too.
Thank you Santa

de VK2PN

The CQ WW CW contest 24th to 26th November.

I got an invitation from Steve VK3JA to do the contest from his QTH.  Impossible to refuse.  Steve has one of the best antenna farms I know.  We get well together and the XYLs have fun together as well.

We got set up on Friday and tested the condx a little that day and mainly gave ourselves some proper training:

Alicja Steve's XYL is excellent cook so we had a ball.  Thank you Alicja.

This is the prediction for the weekend of the contest.  If we believed it, we would QSY to the bottle of red and would not switch the radios on at all.  However the
prediction turned to be totally wrong.  How lucky we were.











The morning started well.  Steve had taken the 20 m band and I was running the 15 m.  Started slowly, but within a few hours we were "flying".

Above is my operating position

Here is Steve smiling while "piling" the QSOs on.

Busy on 15 m

Busy on 20 m

Our best band was the 15 m (believe it or not).  We both thought that 40 m will bring the best result.  Steve has full size wire three element yagi on 40 pointing towards EU.  The antenna can put big signal into the center of EU.

Above you can see the situation on Sunday early morning.  Would you say there is no space to start calling CQ?

Our final result was:

We both think that it is pretty OK for the bottom of the solar minimum.

73
Patrick VK2PN

https://www.facebook.com/patrick.novak.169/videos/2316720625094758/

Armistice event activation

The activation started well, however I've worked mainly JA station and smattering of US and other DX.  Sunday was a bit messy since there were Ukrainian, US Sweepstakes and High speed CW test at the same time.   However I've managed to have a good run for a time.



The the storm intervened that made the bands bare on Monday.   Tuesday was just that little slow time as well.

The A of 35 slowed things down.  On Tuesday we were hit by stormy WX and I had to unplug everything for most of the day.



Wednesday morning made up for two days of frustrations.  Had a very good run to EU o 40 m.  The band opened for over an hour and kept me busy.  Nice.

 Above is RBN chart of activity for my activation

  I'm sure we highlighted for the world the VK Armistice action.


73
Patrick VK2PN