This year the E13 crew once again entered the IARU Region 1 CW field day – operating, as before, from the meadow at the Ochsenwerder Norderdeich, right in the marshlands south of Hamburg. We were on the air as DL0AT/P (DOK E13) in the class Portable, Multi Operator, Low Power, unassisted.

A short teaser first:

Setup started on Saturday morning: the mast went up, the trap dipole was hung in inverted-V configuration, and the station around the IC-7300 was wired up with N1MM as logging software. There was even some time left before the contest start to warm up at the key.

At 17:00 local time it began – and then we operated around the clock for 24 hours, as usual in teams of two, so old hands and newcomers could take turns and learn from each other. In the end there were 815 contacts in the log, spread over five bands from 80 to 10 m. The 40 m band was the clear front runner with more than 300 QSOs, closely followed by 20 m; at night, 80 m brought a good harvest.

The DX contacts provided the little highlights: more than 40 DXCC entities found their way into the log. Our most exotic QSO was without doubt 3B9FR from Rodrigues Island in the Indian Ocean, worked on 10 m. India (VU2), Canada and numerous stations from the USA made it in as well – a nice tally for a low-power station with a single wire antenna.

All contacts at a glance – the lone marker at the bottom of the Indian Ocean is 3B9FR on Rodrigues.

Of course the social side was not neglected either. There was a barbecue, scrambled eggs together on Sunday morning, and the chat corner stayed cosy even when the nights turned noticeably chilly. We were also happy about visitors at the site. Special greetings go to Hanno, who had to stay home at short notice due to illness but did not miss the chance to put us in his log from there on several bands.

The preliminary, still unchecked results have meanwhile been published: with just under 800 scored QSOs we worked our way up to 13th place – and at the same time 1st place in district E in our class. Everyone was delighted with this result!

On Sunday at 17:00, after 24 hours, it was over. We dismantled everything together, left the meadow clean and packed it all away. Once again a thoroughly successful field day!

If you want to soak up the atmosphere once more, there is a short video recap:

The preliminary results list is available from the CW field day committee: https://dxhf2.darc.de/~fdcwlog/user.cgi?fc=loglist&form=referat&lang=de

For the E13 club, Heiko (DH3IKO)