PA1B/QRP receives beautiful Award in the Black Sea Cup International

Click to enlarge    
BSCI Award for PA1B   

This beautiful Award I received for the particpation in the
Black Sea Cup International.
This contest is organized by the Black Sea Contest Club.
Contests like the BSCI offer a great opportunity to work with the lowest possible power.
When the S-meter goes up, my power goes down.

In just two hours I made 25 QSO's with the lowest possible power in each QSO.
Because I used the lowest possible power, 22 of the 25 QSO's,
were made with more than 1000 Miles per Watt.
--->  Click to see the overview.

Thanks to the BSCC.

Award for the IARU HF 2011

I enjoyed participating in the IARU HF World Championship 2011.
After I came home from my holiday, I discovered that I had not sent in the Log. At first I was disappointed, but then I realized that the activity that the contest offers, provides the opportunity to make interesting QSO's.  I had great fun with QRP and QRPp in 125 QSO's, of which many are 1000 Miles per Watts QSO's. Despite the deadline I sent in.

At the time I sent in the Log, I wondered whether my log would be marked as check log or would be ignored.
The contest robot immediately replied with a e-mail, in which he stated that the Log was received ***AFTER DEADLINE***. And in the same mail the robot kindly thanked my for participating and for submitting the log. hi.

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label: IARU HF
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A while back, to my surprise, I received a beautiful
Award for the IARU HF World Championship 2011.
Country winner:  First place - Single operator - CW only - QRP
It's great fun to participate with QRP and QRPp, but it's even more fun to receive an Award.
I very much like this gesture of great sportmanship.
So my thank goes to the Contest Commity of the IARU HF World Championship. (VE6SH and his team)

BQC marathon

Every year I participate in the BQC Marathon. The purpose of the BQC marathon is to promote the activity of the members of the Benelux QRP Club.
The marathon runs over a year. The aim is to make as many QRP QSO's as possible, on all bands, with the lowest possible power. The lower the power, the higher the points.
By participating in the BQC marathon, I discovered working with very low power for myself. In the last part of the marathon, I have done my best to finish in the top three. Below you can see the results from the QRP Newsletter of the BQC.

This year the marathon was won by Robert PA0RBO, with spectacular score. No less spectacular is the score obtained by Adriaan PA0ATG. Because Adriaan organizes the marathon itself, he ceded his price and converted it into an incentive. This award goes to Erwin PA7N who participated for the first time. Look at the enthusiastic response of Erwin on the price, on his website. By yielding of the price by Adrian I came just in second place.

Elk jaar doe ik mee met de BQC Maraton. Het doel van de BQC marathon is, het bevorderen van de activiteit der leden van de Benelux QRP Club.

De marathon loopt over één jaar. Het is de bedoeling om zoveel mogelijk prefixen te verzamelen op zoveel mogelijk banden, met zo min mogelijk vermogen.
Door mee te doen in de BQC marathon heb ik het werken met zeer laag vermogen voor mijzelf ontdekt. In het laatste deel van de marathon had ik extra mijn best gedaan om bij de eerste drie  te eindigen. Hier onder zie je de uitslag uit de QRP Nieuwsbrief van de BQC.

Dit jaar werd de marathon gewonnen door Robert PA0RBO, met een spectaculair aantal punten. Niet minder spectaculair is score die behaald werd door Adriaan PA0ATG. Omdat Adriaan de marathon zelf organiseert, heeft hij zijn prijs afgestaan en omgezet in een aanmoedigingsprijs. Deze prijs gaat naar Erwin PA7N die voor het eerst mee deed. Kijk naar de enthousiaste reactie van Erwin op de prijs, op zijn interessante website. Door het afstaan van de prijs door Adriaan kwam ik zo maar op de tweede plaats.

NAQCC 1000 Miles per Watt Award

For years I am a member of the NAQCC. (#2038) The NAQCC club activities are dedicated to QRP and QRPp operation, using CW. When I visited the Award page in August 2011, I got excited by the extensive Award program for QRP and QRPp. Over the years I have made hundreds of confirmed QSO's with more than 1000 Miles per Watt, but untill now, I had not yet applied for an award.
So I decided to apply for the 1000 MPW Award. I choose to apply for the QSO with the highes Miles per Watt. This QSO with RT6A was made in the Russian DX contest in August 2007. A few days later, I recieved the beautifull NAQCC Simple wire antena 1000 Milies per Watt Award, sent by e-mail, from the Award manager, Rick AA4W.

NAQCC Awards Manager, Rick AA4W wrote in the NAQCC Newsletter 153:
Bert, PA1B (NAQCC # 2038), claimed our most popular award in August. The 1000 Mile Per Watt award. But Bert didn't stop at 1000 miles/watt or even 3000 miles/watt, he worked RT6A, from his home in the Netherlands, at a distance of 1584 miles while transmitting .000085 watts (0.85 mW). This calculates to 1,863,803 miles/watt! And he has the QSL card to confirm the contact. Bert has been experimenting and operating at the Milliwatt level for quite a few years. His motto is: "As the S-meter goes up, my power goes down". He uses step attenuators on the output of his Yaesu FT-817 transceiver to give him accurate stepped outputs from 5 watts down to 5 mW. His web page http://a29.veron.nl/pa1b-07.htm tells a wonderful story of his exploits at the Milliwatt power level and he has loads of information about his homebrew attenuators at http://a29.veron.nl/pa1b.htm.
Bert has set the bar for any of us to try some Milliwatt operating.

eQSL voor 50 mW QSO

Ik had al een tijdje niet meer in mijn eQSL inbox voor mijn vorige call gekeken. Er zaten een flink aantal eQSL's voor de OQRP-contest in. In deze contest doe ik vaak mee met mijn zelfgebouwde 7 MHz QRPp Transceiver met een vermogen van 500 mW. Dat is dus VLP.

Er zat ook een kaart in voor een 50 mW QSO met Wolf DL6JZ.

Het QSO is gemaakt in WAG contest in 2002.
Met een afstand va 369 mijl is dit QSO goed voor 7377 Mijl/Watt.

Het kan soms vreemd lopen.
Want met slechts 23 QSO's met 500mW (4), 50 mW (18) en 25 mW (1) bereikte ik de eerste plaats voor Nederland met QRP en ontving een prachtig Award.

YO DX HF contest 2011

I participated in the YO DX HF contest.
The nice thing about a DX contest is that everyone can work with everyone, generating a lot of activity, so many QSO's can be made.
I used the Lowest Possible Power in each QSO. I adjust the power before I answer a CQ. The higher the S-meter reading, the lower the power can be.
I used a power of 80 mW to 2.7 W into an Inverted Vee.

Results
Nearly all QSO's are made within Europe.
Outside of Europe I made a QSO's with Bud AA3B.
I was suprised that it could be made with just 360 mW.
Bud's station has Excellent Ears.
The second QSO outside Europa was Mongolia (JT), with 1,8 W.

This tabel shows the DXCC countries and the used power.

1000 MPW QSO's
All QSO's with 360 mW or less and the 3 QSO's with 800 mW with YO, are more than 1000 MPW QSO's, Considering the distance from my QTH to each of the DXCC countries. But that is not all. The QSO with JT over a distance of 4128 miles with a power of 1.8 W is good for 2293 Miles per Watt. Wow.

Over the years I developed a strong "more than 1000 Miles per Watt" awareness. I have made a list of DXCC countries, with the distance to their nearest border, from my QTH. Whit the list at hand, I can look up the distance to that DXCC country, to adjust the power accordingly. For exaple, the distance from here to to Romania is 800 miles.
So every QSO with 800 mW (or less) to Romania will be a QSO with more than 1000 Miles per Watt.

Award
When we were on holiday in Portugal in 2007, I participated in the YO DX HF contest. I made 80 QSO's from the balcony of the hotelroom.
Later I received this (top of the page) beautiful Award, for the 1^st place in Portugal SOSB 20m. hi