Amateur Radio Station
Despite a minor solar storm causing disruption and poor propagation on HF, I enjoyed operating today. I achieved 200 QSOs on Sunday, including 60 Youngsters on the Air (YOTA) contacts, 11 Parks on the Air (POTA) contacts and a new DXCC (Cocos Keeling Island) on 20m SSB.
On Sunday 10th March 2025, the first round of the Youngsters on the Air (YOTA) contest took place. The aim of the contest is to provide an opportunity for young people (under age 25) to be the focus of a contest. For 12 hours, amateurs all over the world made contact with each other, with bonus points available for QSOs with under 25s.
I chose to take part in the “6 hour” category of the contest, and as I am 21, I am classed as a “YOTA” station. In between other things, I put a few CQs out on 20m and 40m and finished the contest with 60 in the log. The oldest operator I spoke to was 82, and the youngest was only 7 years old operating with a youth club in Hungary!
Log submissions are to be in Cabrillo format and can be submitted HERE (link opens in new tab).
A few statistics from my log is below:
Last night, the 24th Feb 2025, I took part in the RSGB FT4 contest for the first time. I was using a 20.5m 49:1 end-fed. As the contest began, my strategy was to start on 20m for any DX contacts before moving on to 40m for as many European DXCCs as possible.
Within about 5 minutes of the contest starting, I realised I wasn’t going to get far on the 10w I was using to enter into the “10w Restricted” category, so I increased my power to the maximum 25w as permitted by my licence. This meant I was able to achieve more points and countries, but this was a disadvantage as I had to enter in the 100w category.
My first contacts as the contest began were to the USA, Morocco and the Canary Islands before moving on to 40m. Unfortunately, I do not have access to 80m at my home QTH, meaning I was unable to collect DXCCs from this band.
On 40m, I was slowly but surely beginning to collect DXCCs, until my computer crashed and I had to restart before JTDX would work again. This set me back around 10 minutes.
Owing to a couple of last minute DXCCs, I finished with 40 QSOs and 25 DXCCs in the log, which was nowhere near the highest score, but still fun to participate and nice to gain a couple of new countries on FT4.
You can read more about the RSGB FT4 contest HERE (link opens in new tab).
73 de M7OJA