PAFF 019 - Veluwezoom

Terrible conditions on the third visit
This morning I was over at Veluwezoom for the third time. A beautiful park just around the corner where I live. I had found a good operating spot on a hill with trees to one side and a nice view to the other side.

View from the operating spot

The weather was quite alright with clouds and sun. The same cannot be said about the radio conditions. The high bands were almost closed (some whispers) and 20m and 40m were lousy with low signal levels and QSB.

Apart from the conditions the timing might also play a role in the lower activity level. Normally I am active at the end of the day. This time I was active at the end of the morning.

Sunny spells @ PAFF-019

On 20m I worked 75 stations in just under 90 minutes. On 40m I worked only a handful of OMs. QSB was very strong and after 15 minutes I decided to call it a day.

In total I worked 85 stations from 28 DXCCs in 100 minutes of radio time. Maximum QRB was set by an OM from RV9 to 5000km. Only Luciano, I5FLN came by on both bands.

Thanks for stopping by.
Lars, PH0NO/P

Activating PAFF-013 - Dwingelderveld

So-so conditions on the higher bands

This afternoon I had some 2 hours of time available to activate one of the most wanted PAFFs. I had already selected a nice location for the /P operation at Dwingelderveld. However it turned out that one of the roads through the nature park was closed off. That made it impossible to reach my desired location.

Dwingelderveld WFF PAFF-013

Luckily I had also preselected a few other spots at another part of the park. The downside of these spots is that they are located in the woods.

So after a delay I was again facing a challenge to set up the antenna (especially the extended mast of 15m for the 40m wire antenna) without getting stuck in the trees.

I forgot to bring the 15m band wire and 10m was almost dead (a couple of weak signals), so I started on 17m. There was some activity on this band but not many OMs found their way to my station. After 4 contacts and a lot of calling I decided to go down to 20m. I changed the antenna to my multi 10-20-40m wire to enable to go down to 40m later without the need to change the antenna again.

Antenna in between the trees at PAFF-013

On 20m conditions were so-so with strong QSB. DX was sparse. Still I worked 62 stations in about 45 minutes. On 40m there was also quite some QSB with reasonable signal levels. The advantage being a lower level of QRM than usual. I worked 43 stations in 35 minutes.

So in 90 minutes of radio time I worked 109 stations from 28 DXCCs. Maximum QRB was set by an OM from RV9 to 5000km. Luciano I5FLN and Albert S58AL came by on two bands.
This time 30% of all stations logged were new callsigns to me.

Thanks all for calling in.
Lars, PH0NO/P