2021 Road Trip - Update 62: EN75 Activation Complete, September 10, 2021 2000UTC

The EN75 activation is complete.  Murphy and Faraday teamed up to make this difficult.  The antenna polarity switching failed today (now repaired) which limited me to HPOL only today.

27 QSOs are uploaded to LoTW.   As you noticed I did not have cell coverage today.  There will be no cell coverage tomorrow from EN85.  If you believe you completed and are not on the list please send me an email.  Thanks!

There were a number of callers today who were calling even though they were not hearing me.  I know they were not hearing me because I called them several times and they did not answer.  There were also several cases today where I answered a station with OOO and they continued to call me (did not send RO).  I would stop sending them OOO and move on to another station.  Then a few minutes later they would start sending RO.  

This suggests that they were not watching their decoding and by the time they checked there computer again they saw a decode from me and then changed their message.  In the meantime I have moved on to another station.  In order to complete with the caller who was busy doing something else I have to go back and repeat the QSO.  

There were a few cases where callers who had completed QSOs started calling again, maybe because they were not able to get a confirmation on chat?

On days with difficult conditions and short Common Windows, calling when I am not heard and not watching message exchanges reduces the number of QSOs that can be completed.  I estimate we lost about 10 QSOs today that could have been completed early when HPOL was working to EU.

These issues are particularly a problem when there is a short common window to EU.

Because of the short window tomorrow I will respond to callers a maximum of two times.  If I don't get a response, I will move on to other callers and may return to the missed callers after all other callers have had a chance.   Given the short window tomorrow there may not be time to return.

It would be great if the window were longer, but it isnt tomorrow and the only day I can be in EN85 is tomorrow.  The alternative is to not activate the grid.

The plan for the EN85 activation is unchanged.

EN85AX11 - Moonrise 1646UTC September 11, 2021.  2M EME 144.132 2nd JT65B.  I plan to be QRV until at least 2100UTC (Short EU Window)



Comments

  1. ON4KHGSeptember 11, 2021 at 12:22 AM

    Thanks for one more new one Peter ! Now 990 # Terrestrial+EME on 2m. Quite happy with my small antenna setup (only 2x9el Hpol only, DK7ZB). See you as from the next one. One "strange" thing I was thinking about the other day is that mostly Europeans seem to be interested in working you, very few US stations can be seen in your logs. However, I suppose several (many ?) of the grids you activate are remote and are not active at all, even in terrestrial modes like Tropo or MS ? 73

    ReplyDelete
  2. DK5YASeptember 11, 2021 at 6:55 AM

    Peter, several OM especially in DL were suffering from T-storms and static rain yesterday. That might be the reason for the issues that occured on Friday. Luckily I was early enough to avoid these problems. Static rain showed up every now and than later in the afternoon local time in DL and today its exactly the same. Wide spread fast moving t-storms and static rain again - from one minute to the other.

    73 Udo, DK5YA

    ReplyDelete

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