I never enjoyed an IARU World championship contest like this year. I scored 1.3 million points with mainly green energy and I made 2 records, my highest number of QSO made in 24 hours = 1914 QSO which means 1.3 QSO minute average during 24 hours and secondly, I also enjoyed on 20m band during the night a wonderful RUN to North America with 193 QSO in one hour which means 3.21 QSO minute during 1 hour, this with 100 Watts.

Very good feeling with wonderful weather conditions like 23°C with no wind on the hill. I was able to fully charge the batteries with this sunny weather thanks to the 2*90W solar panels but the battery booster failed at the end of the contest. Fortunately, I was able to use the power generator as backup.

My strategy to erect a Spiderbeam on the trailer was successful. During the contest, the 10m band was fully opened and I enjoyed the 4 elements full size of the Spiderbeam antenna 15m high. I compared it with the TA33jr 12m high on 20m, the difference was clearly 6 dB and more on 10 meters.

With this high result despite low sun activity, my expectation is in SOLAB, a top 3 world position.

During the contest, I also received some very good feedback about my modulation with the following settings, MIC =25 and Processing = 27 and 50Hz/0,100Hz/0,200Hz/-1,400Hz/-5,800Hz/-1,1.6KHz/0,2.4KHz/0,3.2KHz/-1 on the K3 with my PC headset Sennheiser PC 230. The TX curve has been optimised thanks to my friend Pierre (HB9UQX).

Picture of the temporary SO2R antenna setup (from left to right): the 15 meters high antenna mast trailer not yet fully erected with on top the Spiderbeam (RUN for high bands) and the inverted V 160/80/40 (SEARCH for low bands), 1/4 wave vertical with 16 radials, 10m long for 40m, the TA33jr Mosley antenna at 12m high (SEARCH for high bands) and an Inverted L 160/80m with 24 radials 20m long (RUN for low bands).

Olivier Vandenbalck EI7T (Operator ON4EI)