It is the time of big-guns. Very well equiped stations are fighting for good places in the VHF and UHF contests. Power aplifiers over the 1000W are common and most people says it is the must for the contest. Power around 100W is deamed as poor exciter. In spite of it, I wanted to try running a QRP during the contest.

Conditions:

I used my FT-817 with only 5W comming to 50m of RG-213 coaxial cable and simple yaggi antennas. 3m long boom 9.el. baem for 144Mhz (about 13dBi) and 3m long boom 18.el. beam for 432Mhz (about 17dBi). The cable atenuated the output power significantly. In advance, I did not use any pre-amplifier, in order to decrease also the receiving performace. I run this contest from my home QTH at JO70FA. What can be achieved with such conditions?

Result:

I was not runing for maximum possible result, I attend only for few hours. I was just testing how does it work and what is the reasonable level of RX signal, which still make sense to call. There was no problem to make a contact with any local station up to about 200km away on 2m band. But, It starts to be more complicated with more then about 500km. I heard also some DX from about 1000 till 1400km, but they did not hear me among the others. More stations confirm, that the signal level was not a problem, but a QRM from strong stations made a dificulties with reading my signal. The 70cm band was much worse. The atenuation of antenna cable was too high for a longer QSO. It worked satisfyingly up to less then 200km. There was bit more then only half watt comming to the antenna. In spite of it, I made 107 SSB QSO in total (19 QSO on 70cm and 88 QSO on 2m).

Log:

Date	Time UTC	Band	Mode	Call Sign	RST	Locator
5.7.2003	19:05	2m	SSB	DL3JMM	59	JO50XL
5.7.2003	19:08	2m	SSB	DL1APW	59	JO50SP
5.7.2003	19:45	2m	SSB	DK0ES	59	JN48TN
5.7.2003	19:58	2m	SSB	DK0BN	59	JN39VX
6.7.2003	6:30	2m	SSB	DF7KF	59	JN30GU
6.7.2003	6:52	2m	SSB	HA2R	59	JN87UE
6.7.2003	6:58	2m	SSB	OE1XXU/P3	59	JN77TW
6.7.2003	7:08	2m	SSB	DK0RL	59	JN57GN
6.7.2003	7:20	2m	SSB	OK2KJT	59	JN99AJ
6.7.2003	7:26	2m	SSB	OE8GVK/P3	59	JN88GR
6.7.2003	7:37	2m	SSB	OM3W	59	JN99BB
6.7.2003	7:43	2m	SSB	OM3KFF	59	JN88RS
6.7.2003	7:47	2m	SSB	OM7M	59	JN98HP
6.7.2003	7:50	2m	SSB	OM3KII	59	JN98KJ
6.7.2003	7:55	2m	SSB	DL0GHT	59	JO50JP
6.7.2003	8:06	2m	SSB	OE5D	59	JN68PC
6.7.2003	8:30	2m	SSB	S55AW	59	JN75DS
6.7.2003	11:27	2m	SSB	DK0TR	59	JO40QL
6.7.2003	11:32	2m	SSB	OE5DIN	59	JN78BL

Worked locators: