HB9EE

Last weekend we operated the H26 HELVETIA HF Contest. We prepared everything in advance so this was maybe the first time we didn’t have to hurry before the contest We also organised enough food this time At 10 o’clock we met us (HB9ELV Chris, HB9EMP Mischa and HB9EPW Wernie) at our  clubstation to finish the last important things and discussed a little bit how we proceed in the next 24 hours. Last year we had a big mess with our power generator but since the last CQWW SSB, we have a new reliable one which was already a couple of times 48 hours in non – stop operation. So this time we were pretty sure that everything will work… Last CQWW WPX the propagations were absolutely fantastic so we were hoping that the bands will be open again, but we knew that the last days some geomagnetic storms were ongoing and that we might have no luck.

Chris HB9ELV started at 15.00 HB time. We had good QSO rates on 40m and 15m. 10m was mostly closed on Saturday, also on 20m, 80m and 160m we couldn’t log many stations during Saturday afternoon/evening. At about 23.30 to 03.00 20m opened up into USA and we improved our rates again. The night in general was nice, the last couple of contest we always a bit out of luck during the night hours. Steve HB3YYD came early in the morning and  worked on our points – Thank you! On Sunday morning at about 6.00 everything seemed to be close. We were hoping to catch JA on 15m and 10m but in fact we couldn’t reach anything, (ok some were around but not as many as we are used to ). The propagations were really bad. At 10.30 20m was a bit workable. Later during the day 10m was also open and we could reached South America /Africa. But in general only 40m liked us But as we heared from other participating stations they also had their problems with the bands..

Despite of all the bad impressions we worked 68 countries and logged 1085 QSO’s (170 more than last year). This results in a total score of 447’108 points (110’000 more than last year). What is nice is the fact that we worked 25 cantons on 40m! Only Geneva was missing at the end. We had the feeling that more swiss stations were around this year – nice! 33.5% of the QSO’s went to USA. It is always a pleasure to work you guys. Also some exotic ones like St. Lucia/Trinidad etc.. found the way to us

As we announced in advance we improved our antenna system. On our new tower we installed two 5-element 20m monobanders and switched them together with a stackmatch (see picture below). Fun! During the full weekend we had to fight with the wind, at some places in Switzerland it peaked the 250 km/h  mark, so we were lucky that everything is still alive But we had some shaky moments for sure!

In general we are happy with this result, even the propagations were not with us we could improve this year our result again! It seems that we are again on a top positions if we compare with some others

Thanks to everybody how supported and visited us! Another special thanks goes again to Peter HB9EPR who spent hours with us to build up everything – great job!

73 de HB9EE

Last weekend Chris HB9ELV and me HB9EMP participated the CQWW WPX SSB 2012 contest in the category Multi Operator – Single Transmitter. Since HB9EPW is on Holiday and we couldn’t find guest operators, we were only two OP’s. It smelled like 48 hours of fun

The WPX is the first contest we operated from the HB9EE Clubstation in 2012. This time Chris organised some food – a big improvement to last time :p Peter HB9EPR helped building up the equipment and was one who visited us during the weekend. So at least we didn’t feel too lonely…

Equipment:
- Optibeam 9-5 at 12 meter
- 2-El for 40m at 26 meter
- Dipole for 80m
- Inverted-V for 160m
- Yeasu FT-2000D
- Yaesu VL-1000

On Friday evening we left our home and went on the hilltop, our friends knew that we will be off for the contest and that they won’t see us till Monday morning. The families kept the fingers crossed and were hoping that we break the 4 Million record of HB2CA in 1998.

Chris started into the night and was operating until 5:00 HBT. After that I started for a couple of hours. We always changed once one of us needed a break, we didn’t have a time planning or so. With only 2 Operators this wasn’t a problem at all. The one who wasn’t operating was responsible for food, gas in the generator and of course to sleep. During the 48 hours we were not talking alot with each other. Maybe we just gave some informations about the propagations. The propagation was especially good on the top bands. We could enjoy nice 10m openings from Asia to America and of course great Pile-Up’s into Japan and North America on 20m 15m and 40m. The Optibeam was doing a fine job, we are always surprised how well this antenna works. The lowbands were a bit hard but still we logged 517 Qso’s on 40m and the best 10 minutes of the contest were on 40m – a USA pile-up In total we logged  1125 Prefixes which seems like another new Swiss record in WPX (the current one is also from us , 852 WPX, last year).  In total we logged 2677 QSO’s which results in an estimated score of 7’292’250 Points. We didn’t expect this at all. a new Multi-Single Record? We were surprised when we saw the result at the end. Even our capacity in operating and energy was far away from being at it’s limit we reached that score.

Thanks to everybody who gave us points and visited us during the weekend! Also a special thanks goes to Peter for all the support even though you also had not alot of sleep! Since we are always just a handful of operators Chris openened a  Group on Facebook “Ham Radio Contest / Dxpedition Operator Sharing” to give everybody  a place to search for a contest operating possibility or stations who search operators – thank you!

The next Contest will be the “H26 Helvetia Contest” in April. The planning tasks started already today and for sure we will try to improve the equipment again

73′s de HB9EE

The new contest year starts for us today! We will participate with our team at the CQWW 160M SSB 2012 contest. During the full time we will stream our activity live via Ustream (see below). Even Propagation seems to be not very good, we will give our best. Our QTH is the new home of HB9ELV Chris. Chris will also start at 23.00 HBT. Later during the night HB9EMP Mischa and maybe HB9EPW Wernie will operate.

We hope we can find you down log and wish you a good Contest.
73′s de HB9EE

Finally the Certificate of the 160m CQWW SSB contest arrived!

Congratulations to the team!

The CQWW WPX SSB 2011 Results were published just a few days ago on the official website.

HB9EE with the operator HB9ELV, HB9EPW and HB9EMP reached the 1st Place in Switzerland, 31. in Europe and 75. in the World. We reached a final score of 3,710,460 points, 1939 QSO’s and 852 WPX’s in the Category Multi OP – Single Transmitter. This is a huge improvement to the 2010′s CQWW WPX SSB, where we reached 962’588 points.

We are satisfied with this result, but of course there i still a lot to do better. This year we will try to improve our strategy and equipment.

73′s de HB9EE

The results of the 2011′s CQWW 160m SSB and CW contest were published last week on the official website. The results article of the CQ Magazine can be downloaded here.

We reached a final score of 302’956 points and 798 QSO’s. This placed us on the second rank in Switzerland. Congratulations to HB9CXZ who reached 348,840 points. This is a good results for us and it seems that we are also on a good international ranking.

We are looking forward to the next contest which will be the CQWW 160m SSB 2012. Most probably we will operate from the new QTH of HB9ELV. The equipment will be more or less the same. Maybe we will install some more beverage antennas.

We are happy that the new contest season starts for us soon.

We hope to catch you on the band.
73′s de HB9EE

Last weekend we participated in the CQWW SSB 2011 in the Multi-Two Category. To operate 48hours, we asked some friends from Germany and Switzerland to help us. Finally Niko DD1MAT, Tom DK1GO, Thomas DL1TS, Bert DK1IR, Robert DL2MIJ, Jörg DG4NDV and the two Swiss Operators, Christian HB9ESS and Stefan HB3YYD appealed to attend and  build up the station. The planning and the preparation started already couple of monthes ago and the effort for this contest was huge. Unfortunately we could only start to build up at Friday afternoon. 10min before the contest started we were more or less ready to operate.

Thanks for the Pictures HB9DPO and HB9ELV

The propagation was amazing on the high bands. Especially on 10m the conditons were outstanding. For the setup we used:

Antennasystems:
160m: 26m Vertical and Full-Size Inverted -V
80m: 18m Vertical and Full-Size Inverted-V
40m: 2 Element Beam on a 30meter Big-Lift tower and a Dipole at 15meter
20m: 5 Element Monoband Beam Full-Size on a 25meter tower.
15m/10m: Optibeam 9-5 at 12meter
RX: Beverages in many directions

TRX Equipment:
Station 1: Yeasu FT-1000MP, Yaesu VL-1000
Station 2: Yeasu FT-2000D, Yaesu VL-1000
and some filters.

Operators/Helpers:
Chris HB9ELV, Mischa HB9EMP, Wernie HB9EPW, Peter HB9EPR, Nadja, Ives, Mr Toni, Christian HB9ESS, Stefan HB3YYD, Niko DD1MAT, Tom DK1GO, Thomas DL1TS, Bert DK1IR, Robert DL2MIJ, Jörg DG4NDV,

In total we logged 4800 QSO’s with a total amount of 7’400’000 points.

During the analysation of the contest one day later, we realised that we made some mistakes regarding the spotting rules of the CQWW. HB9EE is a fair contest team, out of this bad happenings we decided to send the log as “Checklog”. So we will not be in the rankings but the other stations who worked us, don’t lose their points they got from us. Of course this  was disapointing every operator but for us it is important to follow the rules and respect the contest ethics. We are a young team and we still have to learn things.

We are looking forward to the next contest and of course, at the end of the contest, it is before the contest

Thanks for all the support and the points.
73′s de HB9EE

This weekend we (HB9ELV and HB9EMP) worked the IARU Region 1 Fieldday. The installation of the equipment worked without any problem. At about 13:30 HB time the equipment was built up and tested. The time until the start we used for a short discussion on how we proceed in the contest. We knew that during the same time there will be the “AA all Asia” contest, which will be a problem because of the points we will lose. But in general we knew that our chances of a top ranking will be good. As announced there were not too many other Swiss stations which could win against us. We also realized that we forgot to buy food. Only some snacks and about 12 red bulls were available :p additionaly it was also the case that we were only two operators, which means that the one who was not in front of the radio had to check the generator make sure that it is enough petrol in it – hard 24 hours came up…

At 15:00 HB time the contest started, at the beginning we worked the top bands which means 10 to 20 meters. Propagation was fine. Japan stations and the Pacific area peaked S9. Our QSO rate was in the average and during that time we were around rank 2 in Switzerland. We always tried to build up some pile ups but this was hard to do. Not many stations spotted us even we got some nice signal reports from overseas. At about 18:00 we decided to go on 15m and beam to America. It worked fine. Our QSO rate increased alot. North and South America arrived in Switzerland with outstanding signals. Lucky we got spotted from some U.S. Operators – the show was on!

At midnight we reached the 600 QSO’s mark, but a couple of minutes later our big generator gave up like in the H26 contest (we definetly have to change it in the future). Within seconds we started the smaller backup generator, changed the power cable and we were back on air. From that on we thought a top rank will be difficult to reach. Only 400 Watts, will it be enough to break the big pile up’s on 80 meter? Chris HB9ELV started into the night session. This was the worst time in the contest.. Till 7 o’clock we could only work about 150 QSO’s the stations from America which gave us normally a hell lot of points during the night on 40 meter were rare. It seemed that they worked Asia on the high bands. Only a few found the way into our logs, even they arrived very strong…

Sunrise. We already thought that a good ranking is far away as we realized that we were still in good positions… Next stop was 20 meter with beaming to VK and ZL. A short check and we knew that the propagation was outstanding. ZL../mobile with S9 from Christchurch and other stations came in strong. Also a VK2 /QRP station found the way into our log. But beside of that not a lot was around on the top bands. The decision came from Chris to go back to the low bands and this was just right. Europe was pumping. The logging engine was back on and the activity on the frequency woke us up again. Many German and English portable stations were around. And once we heard their score we thought that we are even on a top rank in international comparison. Not too many stations reached the 1000 QSO mark that time we got there. Our Motivation came back again. Ready for a good finish we beamed in direction to England and we just got flooded with points from the British empire – thank you! Also big thanks goes to Germany, we are always surprised how many stations are active and how they always support us.

Finish! What a day. Chris and I were a bit tired but still nervous from all the red bull’s Three other members from HB9EE arrived and helped us to clean up and gather the things together. Big thank you for this! Arrived at Chris’s QTH it was time for a cup of coffee (we know that our caffeine level must have been incredible high). After two years of good contest results it seems that also the Swiss Amateur Radio OP’s have perceived us Chris was asked to give a short interview to www.Amateurfunk.ch (click on the link to read it).

At the end we reached a score of 1121 QSO’s and 586’764 points. It looks like we reached a top three rank. Some people think we won it, but we only believe it when we have the official results.

Thanks for the points and the support.
73′s de HB9EE