designed
by DK1CM
since Mai 2002
 (click any picture to enlarge) |
Vogelsberg DF Ø TAU always on |
Latest News
| Sepbember 2008: |
Not too many contacts this
September but a high average distance per QSO. Go the the details. |
| July 2008: |
After some trouble with
one antenna we had to setup another tower, but we were finally 24h on
the air. Find out more. |
| May 2008: |
Excellent weather and high
activity helped us once more to reach the mark of 1000QSOs. More |
| March 2008: |
After an absence of three
years in march we ignored the weather forecast and got QRV
anyway. Even with smaller antennas we achieved a nice result. |
| November 2007: |
Excellent conditions gave
us an excellent score. See here for more details. |
| September 2007: |
After a failure we enjoyed
the great activity. See the details. |
| July 2007: |
We had luck with the
weather and some nice QSOs. Details can be found here. |
| May 2007: | We had some fun and got some DX in the log. You find the report here. |
| November 2006: | Conditions and activity were poor compared to the last years, some nice contacts were possible anyway. Have a look at our result. |
| September 2006: | With a minimum of QRM we enjoyed a weekend at the counrty side...In September's IARU contest we can not compete with the ones at the top QTHs, but we have fun. Read more here. |
| July 2006: |
Excellent weather at up to 30°C permitted nice conditions. If there would have not been so much QRM, it was an excellent contest. |
| May 2006: | Having lots of fun, many QSOs, and excellent weather: Have a look for the details. |
| March 2006: |
No chance to reach the contest site due to lots of snow |
| November 2005: |
Not reaching the 1000 QSOs
this time, but who wonders?? It goes a lot slower in
CW.... An excellent contest at the end of the
year. |
| September 2005: |
Excellent conditions but
we could not top our score of the last contest. If you are curious look
here. |
| July 2005: |
We achived a new record:
1065 QSOs and 360k points. Have a look at the details |
| May 2005: |
After not beeing on the air in march
because of a lack of operators and too much snow, we had a good start
and enjoyed 30 minutes of aurora at the end of the contest. Read more.... |
| November 2004: |
Really great activity during the Marconi
contest!
We endet up with 530 QSOs and more than 194k points. Have a look at the
detailed report. |
| September 2004: |
Excellent conditions but for the others
they where even better. Anyway not a bad result for us! See here. |
| July 2004: |
A lot of rain. Nice tropo conditions to
EA1 but not too much activity. Our report of July |
| May 2004: |
That's not usally! Once more we ended up
with more than 1000 QSOs. Thanks for everyone calling us! Have a look
at the summary. |
| March 2004: |
This years season started with lots of
snow... Read more.
Sorry for beeing late with the report, but QRL need most of my time at
the
moment. |
| November 2003: |
We ended a fantastic year with the Marconi
Memorial Contest! No special conditions but good activity. You can find
result here. |
| September 2003: |
We could not top the result of July.
Anyway
an excellent result for us. Have a look at the report. |
| August 2003: | Relaxing during Aple Adria Contest. Here is a short summary. |
| July 2003: | New personal record on 2m: 321000 points; first time more than 1000QSOs! Check out the details. |
| Looking for a contest software with lots of functionallity running with windows? N1MM provides a great piece and it is free! It connects your transceiver and the PC for audio recording and frequency adjustments. The key-function is the bandmap which shows the spots from the packet cluster. It is mainly for shortwave but PA1M (ex PA3CEF, operator of PI4GN) develops the VHF part. We are thinking of using it soon..... | |
| May 2003: | On the air again! Have a look for details. |
| March 2003: | The report of the March 2003 contest is online. Go here |
| November 2002: | We were QRV during this years Marconi Memorial Contest. The report with pictures is available here. |
| September 2002: | We will not take part in this years IARU region 1 contest because of a lack of operators. |
| August 2002 | We had fun during the Alpi-Adria-Contest! See for a report and pictures: here |
| QSL-problems via the bureau should be solved now. QSLs via DARC are directed to Mario, DJ2MX, now. Sorry if any card came back with the remark: DKØTR not member of DARC. It is solved now! | |
| July 2002 | We were QRV on 6th/7th July on 2m only. Here you can find our report. Why not earlier? Two weeks after the contest is deadline for sending the log to the manager..... |
| June 2002: | Results for May 2002 are there. DKØTR is 1. in 2m multi operator section. Results at: http://www.qsl.net/dh0ls |
| May 2002: | We were QRV on 4th/5th May on 2m and 70cm! Have a look at our report of May 2002. |
| April 2002: | Changed our callsign from DF Ø TAU to DK Ø TR! |
| Results for March 2002 are out! We did it! 1. place for DFØTAU in section 2 in DL. Look at the results at http://www.qsl.net/dh0ls | |
| History updated | |
| March 2002: | Added the report of March 2002 contest! Have a look below. |
| February 2002: | Set up home page |
We are a group of ham radio operators interested in contesting
on the VHF bands around Frankfurt/Main in central Germany. Our main
activity is 144MHz during many 24h contests every year. Here those we
take part most regularly:
| 1st full weekend in March | 14 - 14 UTC | 144MHz - 76GHz |
| 1st full weekend in May | 14 - 14 UTC | 144MHz - 76GHz |
| 1st full weekend in July | 14 - 14 UTC | 144MHz - 76GHz |
| 1st sunday in August (AA-contest) | 07 - 15 UTC | 144MHz |
| 1st full weekend in September (IARU-2m-Contest) | 14 - 14 UTC | 144MHz |
| 1st full weekend in October (IARU-UHF-Contest) | 14 - 14 UTC | 432MHz - 76GHz |
| 1st full weekend in November (Marconi-Contest) | 14 - 14 UTC | 144MHz (CW only) |
On the other hand we are also active in many regional contest
in Germany but those dates change from year to year.
The callsigns we used in the past: DFØTAU, DFØGVT,
DLØDK(only Oct. 2001)
Sked are always welcome. Please contact us: dfØtau@darc.de
| 2001 | March | 2002 | March | |
| May | May | |||
| July | July | |||
| August | August | |||
| September | September - not QRV | |||
| October | October - not QRV | |||
| November | November | |||
| 2003 | March | 2004 |
March |
|
| May | May |
|||
| July | July |
|||
| August | August - not QRV |
|||
| September | September |
|||
| October - not QRV | October - not QRV |
|||
| November | November |
|||
| 2005 |
March - not QRV |
2006 |
March - not QRV |
|
| May |
May |
|||
| July |
July |
|||
| August - not
QRV |
August - not
QRV |
|||
| September |
September |
|||
| October - not
QRV |
October - not
QRV |
|||
| November |
November |
|||
| 2007 |
March - not QRV |
2008 | March | |
| May | May | |||
| July | July | |||
| August - not
QRV |
August -
antenna repair |
|||
| September | September | |||
| October - not
QRV |
October | |||
| November | November |
| JO4ØQL | This is our main location. It is situated about 60km northeast of Frankfurt. It is a little hill with 500m asl in the Vogelsberg mountains with a maximum height of 775m asl. Take off is very well to the east. North and south are rather well too. Only form west to north-west are higher mountains (max. 775m). |
| JO4ØBC | This is very close to the city of Wiesbaden. We always use DFØGVT from this place! Very good take off into all directions form 600m asl with a tower of more than 30m. But antennas are just above the trees. Because it is directly in Rhein-Main-area with a high population density and a lot of Hams of course, QRM situation during contests is rather bad. We almost decided not to activate this location anymore. |
| JO4ØXL | Highest mountain in our region with 950m asl. It's name is Wasserkuppe. Only from time to time we have the opportunity to be QRV from there because usually there is another crew active on the UHF/SHF bands. |
| JN49PU | In 1997 we were searching for a better location compared to JO4ØQL and tried "Gaishöhe" with 500m asl in Spesart mountains. Results were pretty poor so we decided not to activate this anymore. Nowadays another group is active there. |
 |
In the beginning of our activities in 1995 the rig was
located in a tent. You can imagine it was really cold especially in
March and November. Nowadays we are situated in Glyn's Mercedes van
what has no
other function than our shack. So everything is installed the whole
year
and just has to be got out of the garage. Usually we are using a Kenwood TS-850 together with a TR-144 transverter by DB6NT. If there are problems we can switch so a Icom IC-735 in seconds. Amplifier is a CE-1800 using a 3CX1200 tube what we are running at 700watts because of generator use. We want to avoid turing our antenna too much so we are usually using two systems with a coaxial relay for switching. During contests we have a spare part for everything with us, so we could build up another complete station! We needed this in March 2000 because the Mercedes van had an engine failure on the way to the contest location. Logging is done with the nice DOS-software of Bo, OZ2M, TACLOG. Very helpful is the connection to the DX-cluster and world wide convers through packet radio on an extra computer. Don't forget the television set and DVD-player for the OPs not operating! |
144MHz:
432MHz:
|
 |
| DF8ZH | Stephan Gottschalk - Steve | stephan"at"gottschalk-online.org | since 1997 |
| DG3FK | Thomas Dölle - Tom | DG3FK"at"DARC.DE | since 1998 |
| DH3FAW |
Gerhard Schwanz |
since 2003 |
|
| DJØWW | Glyn Jones | since 1998 | |
| DJ2QV |
Maik Reckeweg |
dj2qv"at"qsl.net |
since 2007 |
| DJ8OG | Matthias Kromm - Matt | DJ8OG"at"DARC.DE | since 2001 |
| DK1CM | Oliver Prinz - Oli | DK1CM"at"DARC.DE | since 1995 |
| DK7CM | Dirk Müller - Dick | DK7CM"at"DARC.DE | since 1995 |
| DL2KP |
Georg Prinz |
since 1995 |
|
| DL3IAS |
Nino Stahl |
dl3ias"at"web.de |
since 2007 |
| DL3ZAL | Eugen Seiwert | since 1996 | |
| DL4FCS | Wolfgang Heppting - Wolf | Wolfgang.Heppting"at"T-Online.de | since 1995 |
| DL6ZBN | Jörg Hochheimer - Joe | DL6ZBN"at"QSL.NET | since 1995 |
Priorities chance so only some of the people mentioned above
take part in each contest. That's why we are always searching for new
operators! Everyone is welcome if he or she wants to join us with
a perspective, not only for a single contest!
 |
Any card received via bureau is sent back on that way.
Getting a card through the postal way it is sent back on this if there
is a
self addressed envelope and enough return postage (0,55Euro
for
Europe, 1,53Euro for the rest of the world) otherwise it is sent per
bureau. But there is no need to send you QSL-card directly. If you didn't get a card for a QSO, which was more than six month ago, till now, please contact Oliver (dk1cm"at"darc.de). |
 |
QSL-address:
Oliver Prinz
Hadrianstrasse 10
63674 Altenstadt
Germany
The beginning was made in the ending of 1994. The first four
of
todays group decided to take part in March Contest 1995 on 144MHz.
Everything was very experimental at those days. Our station was located
in a tent where
it was really cold... We started with TS-850 and LT2s transverter
and
a amplifier with a single 4CX250B (~300W PEP). Antenna system were two
14
element DJ9BV yagis vertically stacked and a single 6 element yagi. We
started
from 0 to the second place after DKØBN. Til November 2001 we
never
came so close to DKØBN's score again. Beside the cold weather it
was
really fun and we were successful. We couldn't stop. The rigs getting
more
and more from contest to contest what we took with us onto the hill.
Antenna
was soon a group of four 11 element DL6WU yagis what helped a lot to
improve
the score. Next year started with a lot of snow so we were not able to
get
QRV from the usual location. At a lower QTH we were really frustrated
with
a score below 200000 points. A lot of experimenting was done and our
results
were quite constant. But the breakthrough wasn't there. In 1998 we
thought
our location is too worse. We looked around and found a place in JN49PU
at
500m asl. Others already did contests from there in the past, so it
should
be good. But our results were not too good. It was a try. Today we
think
it was mainly a problem of the antenna height of only 8 to 12m. With
20m
or even more it would be excellent there (trees....). In 1999 we merged
with DFØGVT and did the contest from their location with good
results but pretty heavy qrm. From 2000 on more and more contests were
done again from the old DFØTAU location in JO4Øql. The
used Rig was not so often modified anymore. Everything going slower and
the barbecue
had a higher priority. In 2001 we started with a bit 432MHz contesting.
Maybe there is some time to be QRV there regularly.
From April 2002 we changed our callsign! DK Ø TR is the
same crew as DF Ø TAU.
In late July 2005 we got a license for a new club call: DR2X. There are
two special things with it: 1-a new prefix to German amateurs and 2-a
suffix with only one letter.
Contest logging software: We changed from UKWTEST (DL2NBU) to QW (DL4MFM) and over fivenine (DL1ELY) and TACLOG (OZ2M) to N1MM Logger today.
Packet Radio: At the beginning we had no access to the packet network After hard work and trying it often failed but today we are usually during the contest at the DX-cluster DBØMDX and in ww-convers on channel 14345.
Transceivers: From beginning on we run a Kenwood TS-850 and a LT2s transverter by SSB-electronic. Only some smaller problems with this one. A second LT2s is always with us if the Mgf1302 at the first stage dies. From 2003 on we used a TR-144 transverter by DB6NT. The LT2s is only backup. Don't know a better combination for contesting and DXing on VHF upto now. Maybe a FT-1000MP MKV but that is a lot bigger so you have to carry more. We do not use a preamplifier at the antenna.
Amplifiers: At the beginning no one had a big amp. We had to take the homebrew 4CX250B DK1OF design drifting all contest long. With an old Henry Tempo 2002 with 2*8874 we could go to legal limit. From time to time a 3CX800A7 amp by ON5FF is doing a very good job in power efficiency and weight. The top is a 3CX1200 by Creative (CE1800) what isn't producing more than 1KW on the generator. So it is hopefully doing a linear job at 750 watts. In September 2003 we tested a Beko HLV-1200. It was giving us only 650W at the generator....
operators: That's probably the possibility we could do most.
Till now we had no special training for our contest operators. Learning
by doing! :))
See you in the next contest!
Remember: DK Ø TR on 144.355MHz +-QRM
- German Amateur Radio Club
- German Contest forum
- TACLOG homepage
- N1MMLogger
- The DK5YA VHF-page
- Meteorscatter page by DK3XT
- DX Summit
- 144MHz News Bulletin By G0NFA
- Contest journal
- German
Contest Results
I say thanks!
At this place I want to thank Wolfgang DK9VZ (OP of DK0BN) for creating the site http://kontest.de. This way the whole community of VHF and up contesters get closer together. Special thanks to Wolfgang for hosting our website.