II. SUBREGIONAL CONTEST 2007
Having carried out numerous tests with my Mirage amps and antennas and having secured a permit from the KRNAP Institute to operate from the Giant Mts. in JO70SS, on Friday afternoon, I set out for the top of the Vrbatovo Navrsi Mt. at 1411 mtrs a.s.l. All thursday (i.e. a day earlier), I kept on checking the radar at www.chmi.cz and it looked like the low pressure mass and subsequently the rain was moving towards the north of the OK land very slowly. Therefore, I had enough time on Friday evening to set everything up without getting wet.
Shortly after 18:00 UTC, all was up and running. It was time to take a few pictures.
In the following picture, you can see both antennas exposed against the background of the Kotel Mt.
And this is me.
Saturday morning, the wind picked up and I knew that the idea of taking just a small part of the big tower was going to pay off.
A view to the north of the Violik Mt. at approximately 1460 meters a.s.l. That is where I aim my beam to work Scandinavia.
An hour before the beginning of the contest, I went down to have a chat with the owner of the chalet known as Vrbatova Bouda.
One more picture and let's hit it.
Sadly enough, there was no time to take any pictures during the contest. I ran into technical difficulties, not pushing the amount of power I was expecting to get out of the amps just like it was before the contest during the testing at home. Also, I received numerous complaints about the quality of my signal. I lowered the power to the minimum level and decreased the microphone gain. Nevertheless, more and more stations called me saying it was unbearable that I was causing QRM. With that and with the WX which was getting worse all the time, Sunday morning, I decided to pack up and leave.
This way, I would like to apologize to all those whom I was giving a hard time with my wide signal on SSB. There was nothing I could have done more to reduce the spurious emissions up there at 1411 mtrs a.s.l. Eventually, I gave it up and quit. I got 2 months to figure out where the problem was since both amplifiers and the exciter IC 7400 are acting great at home. There must have been a problem either with HF entering the radio back from the antennas or with insufficient amount of voltage in the mains or something. This is and will be subject to further investigation.
Finally, one more picture taken on Sunday evening at 240 azimuthal degrees.
And the results ? A terrible blow-up -> about 340 valid QSOs and around 77500 points for approximately 17 hours of operation. I was also coping with lots of QRM from some of the big guns. But in general, the condx were not good at this altitude. More info will soon be QRV at http://vkvzavody.moravany.com/
Best 73s and sorry again for the interference from my side.
George