CQ World Wide VHF Contest 2018 and the KN55 grid square

I’d wanted to go out to the rare KN55 grid square for a long time and see how the sea affects VHF propagation. Being 22 meters up, right on the shore, makes it even better.

The road along the edge of the cliff where I later set up

The 22-meter cliff seen from the sea

In the first few minutes I made several QSOs with Crimea on the car antenna. Even 70 cm propagation was good: I could copy Crimea with no antenna at all.

Video on YouTube

Apart from Crimea, which you can’t work, and Odesa, where there’s nobody to work, on SSB I heard UT1ZZ, UX0QQ, R6CS, UR8QE, UR3EE and UZ5ZV. After that, silence. Not everyone has antennas that can cover 400–600 km, and this contest isn’t very popular among Ukrainian stations anyway. As someone put it on the air: “I don’t take part in contests like this, come to the real Ukrainian Championship on August 4–5.”

Fine. I mostly came to try the digital modes on VHF anyway. The contest organizers are modern people. They adapt to younger operators instead of dragging everyone into a Soviet-style swamp. The rules are very simple. You can tell that for the organizers this is a hobby, not a sweatshop for training military reconnaissance radio operators.

FT8 QSO with US8ICM

First JT65c QSO via airplane scatter, with TA2NC

First meteor scatter QSO, with DK2DTF

QSO map

I operated until 13:00 on Sunday, then had to pack up in a hurry. A storm was coming in from the sea, and I was worn out anyway after the mosquitoes had a good go at me.

QSOs made with UT1ZZ UX0QQ R6CS UR8QE UR3EE UZ5ZV US4IEK TA2NC US8AR US8ICM DK2DTF RX1AS YO3FAI R1AY UR7QDO UT6EY UR5GFZ TA1D TC7C UR5LX UR5ZFQ