I did it! 1000 QSOs from the same park; LA-2535 Slottsfjellet Historic Site! Ever since LB0FI Morten told me he was working on his kilo award from LA-2532 Fredriksten festning National Military Park, I’ve been wanting to go for one for myself. And once I got my local high ground into the park registry I went to work. In the 49 days between March 29. and May 16., I completed exactly 1000 QSOs from this rather idyllic hilltop in the middle of Tønsberg. All on phone, predominantly on 20m SSB but with a few on 10m SSB and even fewer on 2m FM. A huge thanks to both Morten and LB4FH Kjetil for keeping the race for Norways first kilo interesting all the way to the finish line! Morten actually had Kjetil and myself on his YouTube live stream for a chat about the race just a few days ago!
Some numbers
It took 22 activations. A rough estimate of the time spent actually on the radio is 35 hours. With an average of 45 seconds per QSO, that’s 12 ½ hours where I talk to other people. Which leaves 22 ½ hours where I’m calling CQ. I’ve tried to time it, and on average I’ll call CQ three times per minute when there’s no responses. That yields a total of about 4000 CQ calls. Sounds like a lot, but looking at it, it also shows that I’ve gotten one contact for every 4 CQ call on average. Which I think is completely acceptable!
Thanks
First of all a HUGE thanks to all the chasers! Looking at my stats, it seems less then half my contacts are registered POTA users, but I’m grateful for every single one that took the time to answer my call. I’d like to call out a few of the chasers that has become friendly and familiar voices on my activations. There are quite a few, but I’ll just list the most frequent.
Thank you so much; your friendly and familiar voices have done wonders for my motivation!
Big thanks also to Morten for getting me hooked on this award in the first place, and to both Morten and Kjetil for keeping the race both fun and challenging!
What I’ve learned
The first thing I’m taking away from this experience is that aerials matters; a lot! I’ve consistently had much better luck with my vertical w/elevated radials (on a 10M DX Commander pole) then with my inverted-V dipole from a 5m fishing pole. This in spite of the the band conditions reportedly being much worse on most of the days I’ve been using the vertical. And that brings me to the second lesson I’ve learned: Don’t take to much note of others assessment for band conditions. On my second best day, I completed 108 contacts in around 3 hours – on a day where the Facebook POTA group was flooded with complaints about difficult band conditions! They weren’t wrong; the conditions were challenging – but it was still possible to make contacts. And managing to complete one was all the more satisfying! If all I wanted was to talk to people at 5/9+ conditions with FM-Wide fidelity, I’d just pick up a phone! It’s the challenge that makes it fun; at least for me!
More photos then normal this time; shows my working conditions as spring finally displaced winter on my little hilltop!
