The Marconi Memorial Contest is every year the one closing the season and its a highlight! This year the officials decided that there is no need for a CW-exam in the amateur world. So there is no restriction anymore for the access of the shortwave bands. What a pitty! Not only that there is already enough activity on shortwave but also CW will get lost soon. There will not be too many learning it anymore if they do not have to. I myself would not have learned it if I did not had to for upgrading my license. I can tell you I would miss something.  Never the less we enjoyed the 24 hours CW.......
The equipment stayed nearly the same as in September. The only thing changed was the logging program. In the past we were using TACLOG. Now we tried the N1MMLogger. It is a great tool what is developed for shortwave contesting. It is in the same category as Writelog but it is freeware and supports VHF-contests. We had an interface to control the transceiver (TS-850), the pc was keying CW and PTT, and through a telnet to ax25 gateway we had online access to the DX-cluster. Everything working fine! The only problem: There are so many functions you can not control when you use it the first time....  many shortcuts to learn. We have to discuss if we will use it in the future.....
Weather was horrible! On saturday it was foggy and rained a bit all the time. Only on sunday we saw the sun for an hour or so. It was typical for November in Germany: wet and cold. How nice it was 2 years ago at 20 degrees and sunshine....   Conditions were just normal. Two highlights were IN94 and KN08. The big aurora was just over two days earlier. That would have been fun during the contest!
We ended up with a really good result for our location. Lets see what our compeditors did.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to every one who called us. We are allready looking forward seeing you again in 2004s season.

Impressions:

the weather on saturday! Prepairing the 8x6ele	That is how we secure the rope at the back of the van.	the 8x6ele produced noise to the southwest
Gerhard, DH3FAW (left), Glyn, DJ0WW (middle), and Oli, DK1CM (right), with the last preparations before the contest starts.	Dick, DK7CM (front), and Glyn, DJ0WW (back), hunting for points	A layout of the N1MMLogger
weather got a bit better on sunday.	this years MMC-team: DL3ZAL, DL4FCS, DL2KP, DK1CM, DJ0WW, DK7CM (from left to right)

Those are the squares we reached:
 

2m

TACLOG -reportfile - 2m

Contest Report from DK0TR in JO40QL at 144 MHz
==============================================

Contest : Marconi Contest 2003
Date    : 2003 Nov 01 to 2003 Nov 02
Section : Multi
QTH     : Freiensteinau
        : 60km NE Frankfurt/Main

Co-OPs  : DJ0WW;DK1CM;DK7CM;DL3ZAL;DL4FCS;DL6ZBN

TX      : TS-850 + Transverter, 600 W
RX      : TS-850 + Transverter 1dB NF
Antenna : 8*6 + 4*6 elements DJ9BV, 10 mAGL, 500 mASL
Log     : N1MMLogger 3.0.112, http://www.n1mm.com

QSOs    :  463
-invalid:    0                                       Points/valid QSO
-valid  :  463     QSO-points (*1)    :    160714                 347
WWLs    :   78     WWL bonus (0)      :         0                   0
DXCCs   :   16     DXCC bonus (0)     :         0                   0
                   ------------------------------              ------
                   Total score        :    160714                 347

ODX     : F6FHP in IN94TR at 970 km

Worked World Wide Locators:
IN94:   1   JN37:   4   JN63:   1   JN88:   8   JO32:   7   JO61:  20   
IO90:   1   JN38:   5   JN64:   1   JN89:  11   JO40:  13   JO62:  12   
JN06:   1   JN39:   5   JN65:   7   JN97:   4   JO41:   7   JO64:   1   
JN07:   1   JN44:   1   JN66:   2   JN98:   3   JO42:   4   JO65:   3   
JN16:   1   JN45:   3   JN68:   3   JN99:   7   JO43:  12   JO70:  21   
JN17:   2   JN46:   1   JN69:  13   JO00:   2   JO46:   1   JO71:   5   
JN18:   4   JN47:   8   JN75:   4   JO01:   2   JO50:  27   JO72:   1   
JN19:   4   JN48:  13   JN76:   5   JO10:   5   JO51:  13   JO73:   2   
JN27:   3   JN49:  15   JN78:   3   JO20:   3   JO52:  10   JO80:   5   
JN28:   2   JN54:   3   JN79:  15   JO21:   8   JO53:   6   JO81:   1   
JN29:   1   JN56:   1   JN85:   2   JO22:   3   JO54:   5   JO90:   1   
JN34:   2   JN58:  16   JN86:   6   JO30:   9   JO55:   1   JO91:   1   
JN36:   3   JN59:   8   JN87:   4   JO31:  24   JO60:  19   KN08:   1   

Worked DXCCs:
9A  :   5   G   :   4   I   :  16   OM  :  14   PA  :  10   SM  :   2   
DL  : 251   HA  :   8   OE  :   2   ON  :   8   S5  :  16   SP  :   5   
F   :  30   HB  :  10   OK  :  79   OZ  :   3   

Top 10 QSO-points:
20031101 1858 F6FHP          559  186 539  015        IN94TR      970 
20031102 0204 HA6W           559  317 599  166        KN08FB      847 
20031101 1620 HA6VV/P        599  102 599  046        JN97WV      815 
20031102 0356 I5PVA/6        559  330 599  180        JN63GN      806 
20031102 0920 F5IJT          559  386 599  003        JN06CT      787 
20031102 0147 9A2KD          559  312 599  163        JN85EG      780 
20031101 2019 HA5KDQ         559  215 599  173        JN97LN      770 
20031101 1910 OM3KLJ         599  192 599  129        JN98PF      760 
20031101 1457 HA5FMV         599  044 599  037        JN97KR      756 
20031102 1133 9A1B           529  422 599  162        JN85JX      743  

73

Oliver Prinz, DK1CM