12/15/2003 | VK2CZ Hi all,

With the culmination of a 9 month project to get an 8 ele yagi in the air, it was finished 1 hour into the contest. I initially thought it wasn't working, as signals were way down from what I'd seen in 2001/2. Some basic A/B tests with a 3 element yagi showed how well it really was working. North America was open from 0000z to around 0600z, and the following day NA siganls were raging at 1900z - much earlierthan I would have expected. Good runs into Japan, but they were giving out very low numbers in return, but snared a few QRP guy's. Some heavy QSB openings into EU from 0600z to 1100z rounded out some of the needed countries. Lots from Italy, France, Slovenia, Spain, Portugal and Germany, but nothing from higher latitudes or G land. No stations heard or worked south of Honduras,Aruba and Cuba.

Nothing heard from Africa, beaming and calling into dead air when propagation there should have worked. Beamed into AK (without success)for much of the time as well, with only minor signal degradation for both NA and JA from here.

SEAsia was wide open (their cordless phones were alive and well), but just one HS station live, and he sounded demoralised by dead air as well.

Snared 48 states, missing AK,ME and DC, even worked 7 stations from NM.. for some reason my 10m 2nd hop footprint must have sat on top of NM, as I've never worked so many from there in one weekend. Oddly, it was day 2 when I worked my first WA station, even though they were strong here. It sounded like it was a domestic US contest only :-{ When the beams eventually came around to Oceania, QSO's were easy peasey.

Had a mid-contest visit during a slow EU period from Irwin KD3TB who re-routed his return flight to the USA !! That makes a total of 2 Frankford Radio clubs visitors this year (the other John K3MD).

CUall in 2004 from Sydney. -- VK2CZ