Spring Cup of Ukraine VHF Contest
Archive post.
Translated from Ukrainian.
On May 5 and 6 the second round of the Spring Cup of Ukraine VHF Contest took place. I wanted to go out to the field to scout a hill 270 meters above sea level in grid KN58UD, and also to fully assemble and test my 13-element antenna for the first time. Once we got to the grid square, we started looking for a place to set up camp, and that turned out to be harder than expected: either the trees were taller than the mast, or hills blocked the promising directions. After about two hours of searching we found a good spot.
I put up the 8-meter mast with a 2-element antenna for scanning around and started assembling the big antenna.
Attempt to build a Yagi with vertical and horizontal polarization
The antenna didn’t work out. I’m not much of an engineer :) I didn’t account for the stiffness of the dielectric part of the mast that the boom attaches through. Next time I’ll take a 50x50 mm wooden beam.
After fiddling with the antenna for a few more hours, I decided to give up on it and work the air with the 7-element one.
7-element Yagi designed by dk7zb, in grid KN58UD
On the evening of the 5th I made 38 QSOs, mostly with Pervomaisk, Kropyvnytskyi, Pomichna, Novoukrainka and Kryvyi Rih. I took part in the round table of the “Hart” radio club (Pervomaisk) on 145.550 MHz at 21:00 Kyiv time. Around 22:00 I had a one-way contact with UR5ZFQ from Mykolaiv (135 km) on FM: I heard him at 54, but Dima could barely copy me. We moved to 144.300 SSB and made the contact with 57 reports both ways.
But not a single contact for the Spring Cup log. Even so, going to bed at one in the morning, I was glad I’d got out into nature, spent time on VHF with the radio, and had people to talk to all evening.
On the morning of May 6 I got up at 6, and there were no contest participants on the calling frequency, only local traffic. I had almost given up hope of hearing anyone and started packing, but at 7:12 I heard UR7QDO (213 km) on 145.500 MHz. There it is, at least one contact for a CHECKLOG :) Then people slowly started waking up and the first contacts came in. Along the way I worked the guys from Mykolaiv, UT5ZC, UR5ZTW, and Anatolii from Parutyne, US1IC/A (150 km). Again, lots of long-distance contacts that didn’t count for the contest. From Mykolaiv, UR5ZHP and UT1ZZ (on SSB) made it into the log.
Around 10 o’clock the morning propagation began to close, and only SSB stations could be heard, but with my vertical polarization nobody heard me. So, after a great time, we packed up and drove home.
In the end, from 7 to 10 in the morning I made 16 QSOs for 3052 points, the longest contact being UR3EE at 340 km.
QSO map from the Spring Cup of Ukraine VHF Contest