The CQ-Contest reflector keeps on spewing out nonsense lately about spots, selfspots, cheerleading, cheating, RDXC log checking, to send or not to send logs etc. I‘ve had it with this bullshit. Especially when N1UR tells us that RDXC has a low level of activity (read it here). DUH! So I found myself thinking of something constructive to do. Like making a QSO or so. Today was a local 6m contest. I made a 6m antenna last summer (read it here) but after testing it, it has never left its box in the garage. So 6m contest versus no 6m antenna. What if one of my HF antennas were resonant on 50MHz?
I took my AEA analyzer and checked the OB11-3 HF tribander. No go. Then I tried the Fritzel trapped WARC dipole (30/17/12m coverage). SWR about 2:1. Hmm, interesting. In the shack I configured the band decoder to select the WARC antenna when the K3 is on 50MHz and sure enough I could hear some ON signals.
I tried to tune the amp and found a match but I thought it wasn’t safe to run a few hundred Watts into a totally mismatched antenna. Besides what would the efficiency be? And with the high Q I would have to retune the amp every other kHz or so. I ran the K3 barefoot at 100W into SWR = 1.9:1. There you go: my first 6m contest ever. The rules say mixed mode CW / SSB but there was very little activity which means hardly anyone to work in SSB and no one in CW. I made 32 QSO and got called by an LX station for a new DXCC on 6m.
Those were two hours well spent. Good to know that the WARC antenna ‘works’ on 6m. Maybe I can use it when the band opens up a bit later this season? Now let’s hope the weather holds for next weekend’s RDXC…