Conditions up, antennas down

Of course, once conditions improved the winch on my main mast failed. At least it locked up, and stuck in the fully lowered position. It did not freewheel down from the top. For this I am thankful.

Failed Rhino winch at GM4FVM

Yes, it is mounted that way up for a reason. 

Anyway, I may return to this topic later. For now I wish to deal with the VHF/UHF opening here between 23 and 28 December 2025. The winch failed on 26 December. That was not as bad as it seemed as it only affected my main mast which has the 2m and 6m antennas on it. My 70cm and 23cm antennas were fine and I put them to good use. And I could still use 2m, just with less height and thus with limited effectiveness.

So here are the bare facts about the 6 days in question - 133 QSOs to 13 countries with 56 squares.

VHF/UHF contacts at GM4FVM 23 to 28 December 2025 (image SQMap)

A smallish high pressure moved West from the European Continent, joining another high and developing further. It then remained fairly static for several days centered over Britain. As tends to the best case with these things propagation moved along, in this case early on to the East, then sweeping South. The various bands opened in different directions over time.

Contacts were to F (31), DL (28), OZ (20), G (13), SM (13), PA (10), GM (5), ON (5), EI (2), HB9 (2), SP (2), LA (1) and UA2 (1). 

If there seem to be fewer pins than contacts in that combined map that is because several stations contacted me multiple times on different bands and sometimes over different days. For example, six of the French stations accounted for 17 QSOs between them, and four Danish stations accounted for 10 contacts. Three stations were worked on 23cm and 70cm bands, and I had several more attempts to do this but 23cms proved difficult with long slow QSB.

My QSOs was over an average distance of 774km. 

144MHz

Turning to the individual bands, I made 75 contacts on 2m (mostly before the winch failed). Best DX was to Igor, UA2FZ in Kaliningrad, 1437km, on 25 December. I had worked UA2 on 144MHz before, but only by using meteor scatter. As it is theoretically possible to work all over Europe fairly easily by meteor scatter I never credit my contacts using that mode with the same value as other ways of doing it. Over the years I have chased UA2 on Sporadic E without success. To add it finally as a new country by tropo was particularly nice. 

144MHz contacts at GM4FVM 23 to 28 December 2025

Even more pleasant was the way the UA2FZ contact came about. As is often the case during openings, the "Senior Service" of the hobby, those with 1kW linears and 8m long multiple beams, were resting by listening for somebody sufficiently DX-y to stir them to transmit. I, on the other hand, believe that if nobody calls CQ then nobody will ever work anybody. So I persisted in making short calls and Igor duly came back to one of these. If I had waited for DX to come to me then nothing would have happened. Calling CQ too often can be annoying to others, but on the other hand just listening produces nothing.

432MHz

My 150W on this band was proving fairly effective during this lift with 53 contacts. I managed to work a new country on the band when I contacted HB9EFK on 28 December. This came out of the blue and presented me with the best DX on 70cm during this opening at 1315km. Nick has a superb location and should do very well from such an elevated site. Also in the good DX realm was F4IAA near Perigueux, a distance of 1218km. Not shabby at all and we worked twice on 70cm during this opening and tried 23cm too.

432MHz contacts at GM4FVM 23 to 28 December 2025 

Even with those pretty good contacts on 70cm I suppose that I am still disappointed that I am not doing better on this wonderful band. I would like to have a better antenna higher up, but this applies to all bands really. I had some plan to move the 70cm beam on to my main mast, and if I had done that it would have been stuck after the winch failed. That would also come at the price of a longer coax run. Hmmm.

Missing from my 70cm DXCC list (now totalling 23 with Switzerland) are Jersey, Guernsey, Austria, Italy, Luxembourg and Slovakia, all within my best DX distance. I suppose I just need to try harder. 

1296MHz

 As always, I enjoy 23cm contacts even though they are fewer and not so distant. The point is that as I am not expecting anything then everything is a bonus.

1296MHz contacts at GM4FVM 23 to 28 December 2025

Maybe these were not so far but they were interesting all the same. I had a good CW contact with F6DKW in JN18 square, 840km. This was the best DX on 23cm, with the two contacts to OZ2ND at 770km and OZ9PZ at 689km being FT8. With G3SQQ being SSB and G4YTL Q65 I covered a few modes. I also had several tries with other stations on CW, but propagation was against us. The main snag, which also affected the other two bands to a lesser degree, was very strong long QSB. I think it was possible that some of those attempted contacts would have succeeded if we had waited for a peak in the QSB.

In Summary

In my last posting I hoped that there would be some good openings soon, and the next day this started. Had I been looking at Hepburn? Well maybe but I cannot rely on predictions like that matching up to the real world. The real event was good in terms of length and stations worked, but it lacked a bit in terms of real DX. It added one more DXCC to the 2 metre 2025 list and one to the all-time 70cm list, and that is good. Also, I have now worked one new square on 2m and two new ones on 70cm. After 133 contacts I might have expected a wee bit more distance.  

Still, I can hardly complain. 

Now I can concentrate on trying to fix the winch. 

Nothing there to complain about.

At least it will keep me awake. 

73 Jim

GM4FVM