Some nice QSLs from the buro...

The last buro batches contained some real nice cards. The countries are not that rare, but not always easy to get them confirmed by the buro. While I still like the paper QSLs for my collection, the ARRLs LOTW is very usefull to collect and confirm bandpoints. Every week new people sign up, and DXpeditions from the past upload their logs. The last few weeks confirmations from following DXped were received: 3C9B, 3C0C, PZ5RA, S9DX, 6V7W, 9N7DX, 9U0A, ....

Enjoy the pictures.

T32C - Kiritimati (Christmas Island)

While making a shoppinglist for the hamfest in Friedrischshafen, I'm making an even longer list for a major DXpedition. G3NUG from the FSDXA gave me the opportunity to join the DXpedition to Kiritimati, T32C.
It's an honour to join the team of all these well known DX'ers. Will leave the country the 9th of October and will return 3 weeks later. Want to know more about the island? Click here. It's not an easy path, but with the improving conditions and the teams focus on Europe, everybody will have a fair chance to get in the log. Remember the previous DXpeds of the FSDXA: D68C, 3B7C, 3B9C.... the OPs are PROs and the equipment is top noth. The events major sponsor is Yaesu. We will have 16 FT5000 and the same number of VL-1000 amp.
100 days to go, countdown started....

Lighthouse QSL

The last few years I made several short trips to the french coast. Most of the time I managed to combine these family trips with some hamradio activity.  The result is over 1000 QSOs from 5 different lighthouses. In attach the design of the QSL card. All credits go to my girlfriend Kelly

LOTW

Applying for LOTW was on the TO DO list since a long time. Two weeks ago the needed certificates were downloaded and a letter with my info was sended by post to the ARRL office. A few days later an email with the credintials arrived. I was a little scared after reading the reviews on eham.net, but everyting went very smoothly. Over 6000 QSOs were uploaded and more then 2000 are confirmed via LOTW. In the blink of an eye I achieved my DXCC century award on CW & SSB.

Tip : to merge my daily log (logger32) with my contest logs (N1MM) I used this application of DF3CB.

Frank

LH activation

Last week I was enjoying a family holiday in Normandie. The last few years we travel by camper so there is always an opportunity to activate an island or lighthouse. Last week between several museum visits, there was time to activate 2 lighthouses. LH FRA-080 in Cap Levy and LH FRA-220 in Cap D'antifier.
As antenne I used again the trusted combo : 13m fishing rod and the CG-3000 tuner with 6 radials. Logged about 500 stations. Many W, VE, JA and even 1 ZL.
More pics: click here

LH FRA-220

Good antenne support for the fishing rod

LH FRA-080, Cap Levy

Optibeam antenna installation

Last weekend ON7DR asked my help to do some major antenneworks. The goal was to install the optibeam OB1-80 and fresh assembled OB16-5 on the 24m tower.
Weather forecast looked very good and we had sunny weather and the wind wasn't blowing to hard. Because a picture is worth a 1000 words, I'll post some pictures of the antennes and actual installation. Just want to add that the antennes were pulled up with an electric winch, 2 man guided the antenna with ropes.



Thanks to Luc, ON4CIS for the pictures and his help.

More pictures are available on my flickr account.

Frank, ON7RU

A fresh pile of QSL cards

The last few weeks were pretty busy so there wasn't much time to operate the radio. 4A4A almost slipped through my fingers but I was lucky to work them on 15m CW. An all time new one for me. While the SFI dropped faster then the NYSE, bandconditions are still very good. Even saw some 10M FM spots on the cluster.
As the lowband season is almost finished I took down the lowband antenna while enjoying the first spring sun.
Hope to come up with a better 80m solution next year. Ideas are welcome, please include a way to convince the girlfriend in the drawings ;-)

Also want to share a few QSL cards

Having good ears helps....W8QZA (Maine) was heard on the beverage with his K2 and 5W

Karl, ON5TN @ Princess Elisabeth station on Antartica. Worked Karl on 40m CW

I was one of the last guys who made it into the log. Keywords :bad weather, broken bones and even a crashed car. Thanks for the QSL guys!

ARRL CW contest 2011

The score of my arrl effort.


 Band    QSOs    Pts  Sec
   3,5     308     924   45
     7     286     858   40
    14     776    2328   56
    21     205     615   33
    28       1      3    1
 Total    1576    4728  175
Score: 827.400

Logging : N1MM
greatest experience : Optibeam 80m 1 elem & 270m beverage
New hardware : ON7FU balun, built to last.
KLM KT34A 20m : Killer antenna
KLM KT34A 15m : so so antenna
Homebrew : 40m dipole with fishing rods
Bingo : 80m multi's NV, OR and WA.
Ouch moment : the snooze button  ;-)
To bad: missed the 10m opening on saterday
Fun : Sunday evening, nice runs with many west- and midwest stations in the log.
Missed : A 160m antenna....
Hope: Lot's of these contacts will be confirmed (either via paper or LOTW)

ARRL CW contest

Contest season starts next week with the ARRL 160m CW contest. Last year I wiped my "0" topband DXCC score and replaced it by "47".
This year I wont participate in the 160m contest but go full throtlle for the ARRL CW. in 2010 I made over 600 QSOs on 20m alone, using my hexbeam and 1KW. For this years edition I can use the biggun station of Ruddy, ON7DR. With a 6 elements KLM KT34-XA, an 1 element optibeam for 80m and vertikal with elevated radials on 40m I hope to finish top 3 in Belgium. To achieve this, at least 1750 QSOs are needed, so I challenged myself to break the 2000 barrier.
Another goal is to get the 80m WAS, there won't be many occasions to get it that easy.
My special thanks goes to Ruddy, ON7DR to let me use his antennas and infrastructure.
On the photo's you see some images of the biggun (ON standards) antennas. Note: The 40m yagi is down and replaced by 1 elm 80m element.

Happy new year

2010 was gone in a blink of en eye. Managed to work 16 new countries (to bad I missed ZL8X), the hexbeam is still working great with 2 years of trouble free operation, operated in some contests and finally was active /P and activated a few lighthouses in PA & F. Hope 2011 will be as great as last year and the future looks bright....will tell more about that later.
Last friday a fresh pile of cards was waiting for me at the clubstation. Not the big numbers we usually get, mostly Russian and Italian cards but got a few more rare cards as well. VR2XLN is the first card from Hong Kong that arrives via the buro, thanks Clive. Well known DXer/traveller DK7LX was signing S92LX in June 2009 from AF-029, thanks for the new IOTA and bandslot Georg. Finally, my friend Mark, ON4CCC was active from lighthouse BEL005 & BEL006. During a weekend nearly 1000 QSOs were made. I operated as guest operator and made a few hundred CW QSOs.  Hope you like the cards....Want to know more about the (near) future? Stay tuned for the next post.