DJ3EI's blog

We, the DL0ABT/P team, thoroughly enjoyed taking part in this year’s CW Fieldday Pentecost weekend June 7-8, 2025.

Conditions

We achieved QSOs on all contest bands from 10 to 160. Alas, results on 10 and 15 were a bit meager, while 160 sparkled. (More details below.)

The sun spot maximum is past. So we had only a few connections reaching outside of Europe, and those only hit the “usual suspects”: USA, Canada, and Asiatic Russia.

My personal CW success!

By now, I’m confident enough to call CQ even in a CW contest. During the wee hours of Sunday morning, I did that for hours. When calling CQ, you have to serve what comes: And often it is high speed that comes.

My tactic: When I call with moderate CW speed of 18 wpm (and sometimes even 16 wpm), the high speed extremists tend to skip me. When people answer with 18 (or maybe 20), I’ll frequently get their callsign first try. If someone insists in 24+ wpm, they’ll have to repeat their callsign maybe thrice until I manage to stitch it together. Not my problem.

Occasionally, someone comes along keying even slower than I do. I happen to know how to decrease my own CW keying speed. And, yes, indeed, I’ll do that. I’ll then imagine how the QSO partner is delighted how easy and fluently the QSO completes. I myself also enjoy a little shot of happiness after each such QSO.

All in all, in spite of my moderate speed I finally had the good feeling of passing for a regular contest station. Calling CQ, I contribute my share. After years of only answering other people’s CQs, I finally arrived. This feels goooood! ☺️

Crimea / eu. Russia?

The QSO with RA7R was an interesting case.

I became aware of that one as on my map (see below), that station’s QTH shows it is on the Crimean peninsula. (For what it’s worth, I harvest the QTH info for that map from https://www.hamqth.com/, as that access is easily put into program code.) RA7R is not listed on qrz.com.

It is my opinion we should not exclude all Crimean radio amateurs from our hobby just because Crimea has been annexed by Russia in a blatant breach of international law. I harbor similar opinions regarding Donezk and similar places.

With that opinion, I rely on my interpretation of the Geneva Convention, more precisely, of Article 27 Geneva Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. That rules how enemy troops have to treat civilians, saying:

Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for … their manners and customs.

Restrictions of this are allowed if militarily necessary. But if not, I think “respect customs” implies that even an aggressor is required to allow amateur radio in occupied territory.

If they should allow it, certainly we at a distance should allow it as well. That’s the logic I bring to the problem. From this point of view, I think our QSO with RA7R is quite ok.

Admittedly, this is a complicated issue and different opinions exist, which all have their place.

Our activity

Pentecost weekend isn’t the optimal time, as not everybody is available. During most of the time, we were only two people taking shifts to work the station. In spite of keeping at it during the night, we ended up operating a total of slightly more than 13 hours only. (To get at that number, I count 10 minutes or more without a QSO as a break.) This is typical for us: We don’t take it too seriously. If, for some time, nobody wants to operate, that’s fine.

We achieved 301 QSOs, resulting in a QSO rate of 23 per hour. Our “claimed score” is 76760. We reached 30 different DXCCs and enjoyed QSOs with 196 different remote callsigns, 107 of which were also field day stations like ours.

In previous years, we occasionally went QRP, but this time, our transmitter pumped 100 W into our antennas. The energy came from several big lead-acid batteries.

We used three antennas: One almost full-size dipole for 160 m, a W3DZZ mostly used for 80 m, and a chicken-ladder fed doublet for 40 through 10.

Weather

We had a certain amount of rain at our QTH near Fürstenwalde East of Berlin. It was quite bearable, and the total absence of mosquitoes was nice.

Fortunately, we were spared from thunderstorms during our operation period. Unfortunately, a wind gust cracked one of our tent’s metal struts on Sunday around noontime. A little later, a rain front was approaching, promising further gusts and a chance of thunderstorms, so we (hastily) dismantled and left, some four hours before the official end of contest.

DXCCs reached:

We have reached the following 30 DXCCs (each with the number of QSOs):

Albania: 1
Austria: 3
Balearic Islands: 1
Belarus: 1
Belgium: 5
Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1
Canada: 1
Croatia: 1
Czech Republic: 14
England: 41
Faeroe Islands: 1
France: 4
Germany: 119
Hungary: 8
Italy: 9
Kaliningrad (Koenigsberg): 1
Moldova: 3
Netherlands: 5
Poland: 5
Russia (Asiatic): 9
Russia (European): 21
Scotland: 7
Serbia: 2
Slovenia: 12
Spain: 2
Sweden: 3
Switzerland: 14
Ukraine: 2
United States: 3
Wales: 2

Next, a map of stations we reached (as far as we have coordinate data). This is a “beam map”, with our operating location at the (0,0)-point. Each other point of the map are drawn in the compass direction in which our radio waves have to leave to get there. The x and y axis give distance in units of 1,000,000 m.

DXCC+band - combinations

To go into more detail, here is a list of DXCCs reached by band:

10 m Band:
    Russia (European): 2
    Scotland: 1

 15 m Band:
    Germany: 1
    Hungary: 1
    Italy: 2
    Russia (Asiatic): 1
    Russia (European): 1
    Spain: 2
    Switzerland: 1
    United States: 1

 20 m Band:
    Albania: 1
    Balearic Islands: 1
    Belarus: 1
    England: 9
    Faeroe Islands: 1
    France: 2
    Germany: 4
    Hungary: 2
    Italy: 2
    Moldova: 1
    Russia (Asiatic): 7
    Russia (European): 13
    Scotland: 1
    Slovenia: 2
    Switzerland: 1
    Ukraine: 2
    United States: 1

 40 m Band:
    Austria: 2
    Belgium: 3
    Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1
    Canada: 1
    Croatia: 1
    Czech Republic: 9
    England: 13
    France: 1
    Germany: 41
    Hungary: 4
    Italy: 1
    Moldova: 1
    Netherlands: 4
    Poland: 3
    Russia (Asiatic): 1
    Russia (European): 4
    Scotland: 2
    Serbia: 1
    Slovenia: 5
    Sweden: 2
    Switzerland: 5
    United States: 1
    Wales: 1

 80 m Band:
    Austria: 1
    Belgium: 1
    Czech Republic: 4
    England: 12
    France: 1
    Germany: 44
    Hungary: 1
    Italy: 3
    Kaliningrad (Koenigsberg): 1
    Moldova: 1
    Netherlands: 1
    Poland: 2
    Russia (European): 1
    Scotland: 1
    Slovenia: 5
    Sweden: 1
    Switzerland: 5
    Wales: 1

160 m Band:
    Belgium: 1
    Czech Republic: 1
    England: 7
    Germany: 29
    Italy: 1
    Scotland: 2
    Serbia: 1
    Switzerland: 2

Summary

We enjoyed the experience and intend to come back next year - with a sturdier tent!

If you want to discuss this and have a Fediverse account, leave your comments below https://mastodon.radio/@dj3ei/114661766838562053.