=> 2,254,032

* All of the above - with the exception of 10m - were fixed to NA.


Comments:

** Many thanks to Markus/DJ7EO, Peter/DB6JG and Thorsten/DO1ET for having me at their impressive station, and for wiring up a lot of hardware (both in- and outside) for just a one weekend Guest-Op entry! **

The expected operator was Ben/DL6FBL but he could not make it for the weekend.  When Ben and Markus invited me to jump in I got really excited about inspecting and firing up this site for a DX contest, and meeting the people who make it happen.

Apart from operating I was amazed seeing all the solid engineering and work going into the place, and for sure I will never forget climbing up *inside* the windmill tower holding up the 15m stack.

The contest had a couple of unexpected moments and was a lot of fun to operate.   Markus, Peter and Thorsten would regularly show up in the shack to see how I´m doing or to keep me excited. 40m was a dead band for most of the first night, so things started out unexpectedly slow.  Also, the first (ca.) 2000 Q´s always seem to come real quick in this contest, but then it´s a struggle from DL.  However, Ben had indicated that 15m will be special and it was just like that.

Although trying constantly and hard I fell back with multipliers on 10m.  One could argue that this must be due to the broken 10m Yagi, but I probably simply missed the best minutes of the opening.  Price to pay for sticking with 1 radio this time.  Well, I do favour the idea that the opening possibly peaked better elsewhere...

There were some minor hardware-associated issues which probably let me sound like a LID a few times, but too minor to seriously affect the score or level of fun.  One of them was my incompetence of setting up the PTT switching fast enough so I would not constantly miss the first letter of the other station´s call.

Thanks for calling in and congratulations to OK1RF for an exceptional score from east of DL!