OK2KKW UHF Contest expedition to the Netherland in 1991

Under arrangement of our friends from OK1KIM, Ivo, OK1FRI and Zdeno, OK1DFC, we were invited by Hilversum club station to the UHF/SHF contest. The contest QTH was prepared in the boy-scout cottage near Hilversum. We met at the place the night before the contest . Fortunately, because of the darkness we could not see anything around. In the morning we were simply shocked, but it was too late to return back to our regular contest place in Czech Republic. We were in a small backyard. There was a highway on the 8 - 10 m high rampart to the east and a very high voltage line (1000 kV ! AC) on the opposite side. When we errected our mast, the antenna was almost at the same level as motorway surface. Moving trucks made a very deep QSB !

Nevertheless we started the contest in time. Because OK2KKW is a club station call sign and we didn't make any arrangement with the Holland authorities, we had to use the private call sign of Franta, OK1WC. Our Holland friends were surprised by our equipment, especially by the output power (750 W on 70 cm) and told us they never made more than 140 QSOs on 70 cm there. The very bad QTH affected our result very much. Nevertheless we could make a couple of QSOs to Czechoslovakia, but there were permanent problems with QRN from the high voltage line. We had also a litte contoversy with one known Holland ham. His house was located only few kilometers from our QTH (JO22OF) and he was concerned about our signal strength. His alleged us of having bad signal quality, because his Philips spectrum analyzer showed our signals 400 kHz wide. He did not accept my explanation, that any spectrum analyzer doesn't have the purity of the local oscillator good enough to dectect side phase noise of the oscillator of TRX. He answered he had Philips equipment and nobody could made anything better…We could even show him that his signals interferred on our RX in the same manner as our signals on his and offered him checking both signal on another RX, but he did not care. We were disappointed by his opinion, but no one can overtake physical laws. On the other hand he is no doubt a brilliant microwave ham and he made a great job in the popularization of 10 GHz band among European hams.

Concerning results we might have taken 3^rd place in multi 70 cm category, behind PA0PLY and PA6C. We don't have any confirmation of that, because we didn't receive any official results from Veron organisation.

Another surprises for our Holland friends were:

- we were using a laptop computer for logging during the contest

- our Skoda cars needed unleaded gas

- I was able (because I am sensitive for it) to find water or water pipe or underground electrical cable using a piece of wire or a tree branch...

Vladimir OK1VPZ

August 2000

From left to right: Vladimir (OK1VPZ), David (now OK1RK, ex OL1BRA, OK1AUT, 5N0AUT), Lubo (now OM4ARM, ex OK3TEH), Zdenek (OK1DFC), Ivo (OK1FRI).