This 3rd session of the Backpackers series is timed to coincide with the last 3 hours of VHF NFD which meant finding a quiet frequency was going to be interesting.
On the up side it was a glorious day when we arrived at the summit site to set up:
Building the 9 element portable DK7ZB yagi:
Antenna up and ready. Some strange coloured background behind it!
Shack up and ready for us:
Shack views don’t come much better than this:
To keep us sustained we have proper contester food:
Once on air we scanned the band looking for a slot between the strong VHF NFD stations. We found one a fair way from the strongest ones but one near from the North lifted our noise floor each transmission and made receive pretty tough. However we persevered and activity seemed pretty good though DX apart from Scotland was scarce for us.
We like to run mostly and keep the work rate up to keep the QSOs coming in and search and pounce when it goes quiet. The last hour was very slow after the NFD closed down but on the up side we had a receive back! We managed 120 QSOs which we were pretty pleased with and a best DX of nearly 800km to the Orkneys which was great. And he was booming down too. No ON or PA at all though.
QSO map:
Claimed scores:
Results:
Full results list (PDF)