EU HF championship 2014

This contest is a new one for me.  Normally after the IARU contest I close the books for a couple of months.

With my absence during the IARU contest, I decided to take this one.  Last year I was active during a couple of hours with a good QSO rate but this year I wanted to play the full 12 hours... as a test for some items in the shack.

First of all the behaviour of the G5RV antenna with optimal placement and height.
Secondly try to make 100% voicekeyer automatic SSB qso's.
Thirdly to see how the antenna at 15m height behaves on 20m to Germany as a preparation for the WAG contest later this year.

1. I'm now able to hang up the G5RV with a leg-angle of about 150 degrees.  This is much better than before because I can attach now to the upper part of the house.  Results were outstanding on both 40m (800W) and 80m (600W output).    The G5RV, provided with a coax 10-turn current balun, was connected to the MFJ-986 autotuner.  Although it is written in the MFJ manual to avoid this situation without the optional balun, this worked perfect.  On 160m tuning a G5RV is impossible as expected.

2. Mixed mode was a disaster.  It went well on 20m but on the lower bands...  I could hear only 10 stations on 40m calling CQ in the upper part >7100 Khz.  I even did not listen to 80m SSB.  This contest seems a real CW contest.  With the children sleeping I made some QSOs with the Yaesu voice keyer.  This worked good for S&P.

3. Even 15m is too high for 20m contacts to DL.  I worked DL stations, but I think this will go better with my Ultrabeam vertical.  To be evaluted during the WAG.

All this testing - and in the mean time working the KH0UA expedition - had a influence on the result.  I did not play on 10m and lost many multipliers.  I wasn't prepared for the high degree of participating stations and somethimes the 40WPM CW was a thriller.  

Normally some days before a big CW contest I play with morserunner to prepare high speed CW.

I'll keep in mind the 1100 QSO and not the poor 214 multipliers.

OT1A Max Rates:

SSB 2014-08-02 1227Z - 6,0 per minute  (1 minute(s)), 360 per hour by OT1A
CW  2014-08-02 1234Z - 3,0 per minute  (10 minute(s)), 180 per hour by OT1A
CW  2014-08-02 1700Z - 2,2 per minute  (60 minute(s)), 130 per hour by OT1A




Next year is for real !