IARU R1 144Mhz 2020

Most of our team members (DL6FBL, DK4EE, DK5OH, DL2ZXA) met on Friday noon and started assembling the station. The weather was fine and 5 of the 8 antenna systems could be tested on Friday night. This was the first time that DA0FF was QRV in FT8 and of course we could enjoy our classy Wasserkuppe barbecue because the computer was doing all the hard work for us😊.
We agree on the fact that FT8 is an interesting weak signal mode and that it is well suited to check out conditions but we strongly object to using it in any kind of mixed SSB/CW/FT8 contest.
Arriving on Saturday morning we were also very happy about some support by DR9A team members Jens (DF5HC) and Alex (DL8AAU). Thanks to the weather god there was only one heavy rain shower which left us soaking wet 3 hours before the contest start but after mounting the other 3 antenna systems we were ready to go (here it is again, the classy Wasserkuppe barbecue).
When the contest started we experienced exceptional high QSO rates (155 QSOs 1st hour) throughout the first hours but the average distances were quite low which worried us a little bit.

 

      |QSO | Km | AVG | Odx | Loc |
14h | *155|*40867| 264| 842| *47|
15h | 130| 36841| 283| 873| 47|
16h | 96| 28575| 298| 806| 44|
17h | 87| 32718| 376| 922| 44|
18h | 68| 25463| 374| 1009| 41|
19h | 70| 26834| 383| 1029| 40|
20h | 51| 19554| 383| 871| 37|
21h | 53| 17101| 323| 1310| 30|
22h | 41| 18273| 446| 868| 30|
23h | 42| 19908| 474| *1369| 32|
00h | 22| 6951| 316| 619| 15|
01h | 24| 9261| 386| 716| 18|
02h | 16| 8771| 548| 1029| 15|
03h | 12| 8350| *696| 1043| 8 |
04h | 23| 11845| 515| 1014| 18|
05h | 22| 9928| 451| 1032| 18|
06h | 42| 18377| 438| 1011| 32|
07h | 50| 19556| 391| 1148| 32|
08h | 56| 20837| 372| 882| 36|
09h | 58| 18921| 326| 734| 40|
10h | 54| 21753| 403| 836| 37|
11h | 49| 20455| 417| 949| 37|
12h | 37| 11388| 308| 889| 23|
13h | 48| 20202| 421| 763| 36|
(*=max)

 

Despite the many QSOs the night was a head-to-head race with S59DEM and SN7L who were always close to us and made us sweat. After switching over from SSB to CW we managed to improve our distance per QSO average.
Then at sunrise it became clear that we were slightly ahead of SN7L but we also knew that this would be a hard race. Fortunately there seemed to be some slightly enhanced tropospheric ducting (in contrast to the last years) to the west so that we could work a few stations from Spain and France near the Bay of Biscay at distances well over 1000Km. Even the participation from UK and the Netherlands improved our average on Sunday morning. Thank you guys for working us!

 

We finally ended the contest with around 1275 QSO, ca. 460000 claimed points (avg. 361 km/QSO).

 

Top 10 QSO:
EA1RLE          1369 km IN73TA
EB1RL           1310 km IN83FD
EA2T            1192 km IN93IA
F2CT            1171 km IN93GJ
F5DYD/P       1058 km JN03KG
YU7ACO        1043 km KN05RD
F4CWN          1032 km JN03KN
YO5LD/P       1029 km KN16JS
YO5AVN/P     1029 km KN16JS
YU1LA           1014 km KN04FR

 

 

0-100 km      : 71
100-200 km   : 229
200-300 km   : 326
300-400 km   : 245
400-500 km   : 107
500-600 km   : 124
600-700 km   : 99
700-800 km   : 53
800-900 km   : 27
900-1000 km : 11
+1000 km     : 14

 

 

DL : 738 (56.5%)
OK : 129 (9.9%)
F : 85 (6.5%)
I : 66 (5.1%)
G : 40 (3.1%)
PA : 40 (3.1%)
SP : 29 (2.2%)
OE : 26 (2%)
OM : 24 (1.8%)
HB : 23 (1.8%)
S5 : 21 (1.6%)
ON : 21 (1.6%)
9A : 19 (1.5%)
OZ : 11 (0.8%)
HA : 9 (0.7%)
SM : 7 (0.5%)
YU : 7 (0.5%)
YO : 3 (0.2%)
EA : 3 (0.2%)
LX : 2 (0.2%)
E7 : 1 (0.1%)
UR : 1 (0.1%)
T7 : 1 (0.1%)

 

Check out our QSO-Map:
http://opencontest.org/edi/map/20200913010221000331NUUVLK

 

Happy about so many nice contacts we left the Wasserkuppe 3 hours after the end of the contest. A big thank you to all stations who worked us! We look forward to working you in the future.

 

73 de DA0FF Team
(DF5HC, DK4EE, DK5MX, DK5OH, DL2ZXA, DL6FBL, DL8AAU, DL4XX)