It was not possible to gather a team for the CW part in June, but there were several volunteers for the SSB competition on September 2-3, 2023, including: Marcin SP5ES, Andrzej SP5DDF, Mirek SP5GNI and Adam SP5UFK.

This time, we chose a fallow, forested plot of land owned by one of our colleagues as our work place. Excellent location – one of the highest points in Masovia, 52.23121° N, 21.71888° E, grid KO02uf. We chose a long clearing with an excellent natural “mast” to hang the antennas – a tall birch tree, which was used to pull the balun with connected dipoles for 160, 80 and 40 m.

To work on higher bands, we assembled a mast and Mosley Mini-32A antenna with a rotator.

As usual, we used FT991 as a field radio. The power was supplied by connecting to the car battery. This solution had its advantages, but also disadvantages. As the battery discharged, the transmitter power decreased quite quickly to 50% or even 30%. Perhaps the reason was the “age” of the battery – isn’t 6 years too much? It was necessary to turn on the car engine from time to time – when it was running, the power returned to normal (100W). It is debatable whether using a generator would be a better solution.

We logged the QSOs in the N1MM+ program, and used a 150W DC/AC converter (courtesy of Marek SP5ISZ) to power the laptop and the rotator. Unfortunately, the RF interference it caused could be seen (heard).

Both Saturday and Sunday were sunny and warm, which was an additional advantage of our expedition. However, the night was (too) cold.

Propagation conditions were not the best. There were few stations on the 15/10m bands, even in the competitive All Asian contest. As a result, we made 259 contacts.

Adam SP5UFK set up his workstation for the IARU 144 Contest UKF. He used his FT991A with a Yagi F9FT 9el antenna on a 3m boom – on an aluminum foldable mast. Adam as SP5UFK made (including the minimum, i.e. the SN7L station operating from Śnieżka 1603 m above sea level) 38 QSOs. Marcin SP5ES also worked on UHF.

Others at Fieldday 2023: https://dxhf2.darc.de/~fdssblog/pic2023//index.html

Competition results: https://dxhf2.darc.de/~fdssblog/user.cgi?fc=loglist&form=referat&lang=de

Mirek SP5GNI