2nd Subregional Contest 2020

Due to the restrictions for multi opeartors stations and the greater grouping of people, we participated in this contest under our personal call signs. Dusan, OM3WAK, competed from home and I, OM8WG, set out to test a new spot, which, if proved successful, we would use for contests under the club call sign OM3KSI.

The spot is situated at an altitude of 350 metres, above the village of Kosicka Polianka near Kosice, at the locator KN08QQ. It hadn’t rained for two months and, as if it were on purpose, it started to rain two days before the contest, at times quite heavily. It was still raining early on Saturday and when I got up in the morning and looked out the window, I could see only about 50 metres into the distance. I began to doubt whether I would get up that little hill, as a good part of the road is a field path. Fortunately, although with small problems, I succeeded. 

I took a 9el. DG7YBN antenna, an ICOM IC9700 and a 10-meter-high mast. In compliance with the hygienic rules, Peter, OM8ADU, was on the hill with me and went the 432 MHz band. Then on Sunday, when there wasn’t much else for me to do, Peter made a couple of connections on 144 MHz.

Just like many of us, I won’t be an exception if I say that the transmission conditions were very bad. I was doing what I could. Basically, I managed to write in the log all that I could hear. There were very few stations on the band due to the weather conditions and that results in only 69 connections, which is not too bad when it comes to the points. Of course, I expected more, but that’s all I could do. :)

The following photo shows how it went. So far, this spot seems the best out of the ones we’ve tried. The biggest problem in Kosice is the western direction, as the city lies in a basin behind the Slovak Ore Mountains, which makes it closed to the west. From this spot, we were able to connect with stations from western and central Slovakia, which we couldn’t reach from the other spots in and around Kosice.

We packed it up on Sunday at around 12:00 UTC. The worst was about to unfold. We had to take down the mast with the antenna in strong wind gust, which began to blow early on Sunday and continued all throughout Sunday. It didn’t go without harm. On Monday, I had to go and see Peter, OM8ADU, at work in the hospital and after his professional inspection of an X-ray of my finger (ring finger), he found a fracture. He put a splint on it, and we joked about how we ended up. Another damage was to the antenna, but it will be fixed and used for many years to come.

A record of connections with my ODX S51S, JN75ES 620 km:

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