TBDC Pre-Stew Contest Soapbox

Stew Perry Topband Distance Challenge is one of the few contest where distance worked translates to scores. This together with the challenge of digging stations out of the noise is what makes 160 meter contests attractive to me. Here is the update from te 2019 edition of the “pre-Stew” contest.

We had decent propagation but activity felt a little on the low end. JT5DX was booming all night long. Because of too little prep time and some bad luck I only had two RX Pennants, one in N/W the other in N/E. Luckily static was quite low so most of the time the transmit vertical performed equal or better than the RX loops.

JH2FXK came in early in the evening, VK6VZ and CX6VM where my longest distance Qs. US followed by Russia topped the list of logged countries. Got through to everyone I heard except FY5KE and AA0RS who I was struggling to get the locator from, so not logged – SRI Guys.

Used an Elecraft K3 and a linear loaded vertical, the Lannabo Axtorp, plus a 1kW amplifier. Logged this contest with DXLog who struggled a bit with the remote serial connection (Frequency reading from CAT intermittently lost making the logger flip between RUN and S/P effectively wipe out calls in the middle of logging a contact).

Final note: F-U-N-!

73 de SM0MDG/SE0X!