At the end of November we met again at SO4M to participate in the CQ WW DX CW Contest. Of course preparations to the contest started much earlier.

There were many modifications and changes in the setup of the station last months.

In the first half of November Mirek SP4MPG and Greg SQ4NR worked hard to change guy wires of the tower holding the 15 meters stacked Yagis. In the meantime Maciek SQ6MS/F4VSQ was designing and preparing boxes for the automatization of the station. The main target was to prepare the effective in-band setup.

Mirek SP4MPG made a lot of work with the antennas, wires, testing etc.

Maciek SQ6MS/F4VSQ and David F5SDD came to the QTH of SO4M on Tuesday before the contest. Together with Mirek SP4MPG they made a huge work preparing RX antennas (8-circle vertical arrays for 160m and 80m).

The big change at the station is also the low bands antenna setup. In the former setup it was one system: so you could work 160 meters or 80 meters but not both bands in the same time. Now we have separate antennas for both low bands.

We also did some changes in the layout of the operating positions. Just to make the contesting more comfortable, to have better access to all switches etc.

On Friday the whole team (F5SDD, SP4MPG, SP5OXJ, SP5UAF, SQ4NR, SQ6MS) was at the station ready to work. Some last works were done on the towers etc.

The station was ready on time and we started the contest. Here is the claimed score:

 Band   QSOs Zones  Countries
  160:   210   17     69
   80:  1110   30     97
   40:  1897   38    138
   20:  1412   39    131
   15:   725   37    126
   10:    47   18     45
Total:  5401  179    606

Total Score 8,464,655

There were some minor problems during the contest. Sometimes we had a problem with PTT in the 20 meters PA. We lost about an hour trying to solve the problem each time it happened. We also had a problem with 10 meters – the dedicated PA failed and we could work only low power (100W from the transceiver) on this band.

Overall we have many new experiences. Of course we had great time. Besides contesting it is always great to spend time with real friends, in a good atmosphere. We also have many conclusions – what we should change in the future.

On our Polish arena we compete with the SP4R Contest Team. This time we lost (again) so we must do better next time. We are analysing the log, the problems, the setup etc. Next time we will try to be more effective. Congratulations to our friends from SP8R for their contest effort.