EI5IX: February 2014

27 Feb 2014

2014 RSGB - March 144Mhz / 432Mhz Contest

M0MDG/P - The Middlesex DX Group

John G0KLX, Jason M1PRO, Carl 2E1IDC, Simon MW0TBI and Steve G1OFW including myself Pat M0XII will be out Portable in the 24 hour RSGB - March 144Mhz / 432Mhz Contest this weekend on March 1st & 2nd, we will be active on 144Mhz and 432Mhz SSB & CW from Locator: JO00EW so feel free to give us a shout if you hear us on.

Pat

EI5IX - M0XII

25 Feb 2014

M0XII/P - UKAC 50Mhz Contest - February

February's UKAC 50Mhz Contest in locator square IO91MP was not great to be honest out portable, band conditions were below average and were a lot worse than last month in IO91 square, heavy QSB and lot's of weird noises were coming and going on the band which made life difficult pulling out the weak ones in the noise but a big thank you to all who persisted with great patience. Activity from a few regular squares seemed down compared to last month but I did notice that this month there was some fantastic activity from locator's IO81, IO82, IO83 & IO93 squares, conditions seemed to be a lot more favourable around these squares in the middle of the UK with regards to activity on 50Mhz band.

It was nice to speak again with Richard GD8EXI in IO74PC square who was my furthest DX with a distance of 371KM via ground wave propagation, same as last month although his signal was a small bit down compared to January's results. I finished the contest with a claimed score of 69,498 points with a total of 77 QSO's and only 9 Multipliers this month. My working conditions was the same as last month an FT847 Transceiver with 100 watts into a 5 Element Home brew Yagi up only 10 foot.

Here is a map of the contacts made in the contest from 20:00 UTC till 22:30 UTC

Again thank you to all who gave away points during the contest and I do look forward to working you again in the next UKAC contest.

Pat
EI5IX - M0XII

20 Feb 2014

50MHz UKAC January 2014 Results

The 2014 series of 50MHz UKAC kicked off with an all time record entry of 155.

The previous highest was 152 in April 2013 and in January 2013 there were 128 entrants. Unfortunately the conditions didn't match the entry level and were variously described as "poor", "desperate" and "the worst ever". Wet and windy weather meant a number of entrants had their masts lowered for safety and portable activity was somewhat reduced. Despite this there were 278 active stations in 21 UK squares and 2 non-UK squares. The conditions caused the multiplier totals to be very low with G3PYE/P (JO02) and M1MHZ (IO92) only working 15 squares. The best tropo contact was between GM4JR (IO85) and G3PYE/P (JO02) at 405kms. I managed to finish up in 3rd place from IO91 Square within the Restricted section out of a 100 entrants in this section all of us on 100 watts output, here is a list of the top 10 who finished in the restricted section.