Party

The European PSK Club has the honour to invite the radio amateurs all over the world to participate in the EPC PSK63 QSO Party. The objective of the competition is to establish as many contacts as possible between radio amateurs around the world by using the BPSK63 mode. Everybody can work everybody for QSO and multiplier credit. Rules in EPC club page.

PSK mode is my favorite among digital ones. Our club invites you all to join the party on Sunday 18^th November. Last year it was a very nice party. My friend Spiros, SV8CS took the first place worldwide but this year is very busy to prepare his expedition to Morroco for CQ WW CW contest and EME activities, as CN3A. So I will be alone in the party. Please keep me company and have a drink with me. Propagation is not so good but participation counts.

Halloween

I intend to spend next weekend in my shack joining the great CQ WW SSB contest. I remember three years ago this time, I was in USA. I visited 5 states in that trip: Massachusesetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Illinois and Indiana. All were wonderful, especially Vermont. Fall had given all these marvelous season colors to trees and flowers. Cold and rain were present. Halloween time had dressed towns and villages with special costumes. For a stranger it is was a really good time to be there.

But most of all these things I remember well my visit to HRO ham shop in Salem, New Hampshire. Salem is a small village just 40 miles north of Boston. I got my FT1000MP Mark Field from there! Only $1750, no VAT at all in this state. The guys were very friendly with me. George Varvitsiotis, the owner of the shop, is also Greek and probably that was an additional reason to be so good with me. Anyway I left the shop with the best impressions. I was really so happy with my purchase that all the else seemed insignificant details to me. Back to the hotel I got it out of the boxes and put it in my suitcase. And so it came all the long way back to Greece through four different airports fortunately without any problem.

Three years now I have this transceiver in front of me serving me in all great ham events. And many times, in the middle of a QSO as I stare its display, I recollect all this wonderful time I spent to USA and mostly just the time I got the opportunity to acquire it.

October in the shack

The first clouds after months appear in the sky. Some of them dropped even rain. What a nice feeling the changing of the season. Ham radio keeps me pretty busy. Unfortunately the propagation was very low. Sun spots refuge to appear to cheer bands a little bit up. So the Tara Rumble PSK contest turned out to be a great disappointment. I join Rumble every year but this was my worst one. Only 67 QSO, no USA, no Japan, no VKs this time. On the other hand some rare DX showed up the first days of October. It needed to sweat to work some of them but everything went ok after all. ACOM1000 helped a lot. Two new ones 3C7Y and H40MY among them left me happy, as I am approaching the final target of ARRL Honor Roll. Actually I have 321 countries confirmed till now in LoTW. With a little luck and better propagation I hope to get it in a couple of years. Be healthy all of you and enjoy the hobby.

The mother of contests

Last weekend we had a lot of fun with the CQ WW RTTY contest. It’s the biggest in the world. Every year a lot of stations participate from every place around the world. Some expeditions go there on purpose, just to have a good score. So it is a very good opportunity to work rare dx station on RTTY. That is exactly the reason I participate. I have no any chance for championship but I always enjoy it.

I always use the MixW, which it is an excellent tool for this job. This year I made 532 qso’s in all bands and 293643 points. This is my best score ever, so I have all the reasons to be happy. Rare stations on RTTY were heard and worked, like: 9U0A, HC8N, VK9LA, PZ5RA, KH6ND, D4C, KP2/NP3D and many others I cannot recollect. Some of them sent already the logs to the LoTW, which I found an excellent idea. Even propagation conditions were poor without sunspots on the sun and SFI lower than 70, I had no trouble working all these exotic stations. So let promise a sked for next year when situation will be much better. Till then we have a lot of marvelous event to join. So stay tuned.

And now what?

"The on-line log has now been updated to include all QSOs up to 03:31Z today, when 3B7C closed down. There are now 135,718 QSOs in the log....Thank you for all your kind comments on the DXpedition and your good wishes for the team's safe return. I have passed these on and they have been much appreciated by the team."With those words the pilot station of 3B7C wrote the epilogue of this tremendous dxpedition. In our island, Zante, 6 stations have worked them. Their calls are: SV8CS 24, SV8RX 23, SV8KOK 10, SV8DOU 8, SV8KOM 8 and SV8AXZ 1. The first 5 of them succeeded to get in the 100 Greek list. All these days, that it lasted, we had a lot of fun, trying to work as many slots as possible. We are all good friends and during this contest type event we had a lot of bets. So we are going to meet now to analyze the results and celebrate our achievement drinking lager.
And now what is next? What else the huge CQ WW RTTY Contest during this weekend. So I have again to shout the well known cry: See you in the pile ups!!!

Hunting 3B7C

What an expedition! It looks like a road roller. Too many stations active simultaneously in all bands in all modes for as long as 18 days. They have as a target to beat the 168,772 QSO record of D68C. I think they have good possibilities to succeed. The huge amount of equipment, big antennas, linears, and the plenty of very experienced operators guarantee big scores for sure.

“Our strategy is to run maximum power on as many bands as possible. We will have big monoband antennas on all bands 30m to 6m and verticals on the remaining bands. This way we will be heard everywhere in the world at some time of the day or night. We will also be active for around 18 days covering three weekends. By adopting this strategy we should be able to give at least one contact to anyone who wants one anywhere in the world.”

With these words describe their plan the 5 stars DX group (http://www.3b7c.com/). It is a very well organized expedition indeed.

So far they are working perfectly with absolute control of frequencies and QSO running. They are far away comparing with similar expeditions. I put here a list with bands I have already worked, with the notation that we are just at the beginning. There are 12 days left.

By the way they have promised digital modes after 15 of September. It deserves a special note the way they present their online logs and statistics. It gives a contest spirit to hams they want to work them. Good luck with them. See you on the pile ups.

Goodbye summer

Summer is dragging its last days. After three periods of high temperatures and the biggest fires that stroke Greece last 100 years, it is going to live us, fortunately. This week, temperature dropped dramatically to 15-20 degrees, quite low for the season in Greece. Anyway this weather development gave us the signal to leave cottage and come back to main QTH.

During summer only a little ham radio activity took place. The portable situation, you can see the wire antennas on the picture, does not give many possibilities during low propagation periods. So we continue the 6 meters marathon. We got 42 countries this year. Not bad. Next year we will go better. We also participate in the SARGT RTTY contest. It was a nice experience indeed. We made 230 qso, as a multiband operator. Lots of exotic callsigns were heard and worked, even with portable conditions.

By the way the ACOM1000 returned strong and healthy. It took only a week to be fixed and come back. The problem was a leakage of a capacitor in the main PCB (the picture shows these capacitors). Not a big deal indeed. As I had commented, it had to pass through children’s illnesses before go to real service. But the ACOM service was quite fast and friendly. My compliments to Stan (LZ1IU) and his great company. Now I feel ready for the WW CQ RTTY contest at 29-30 of September weekend.