The IN3HOG multi-operator team in the July MW contest 2019 - JN72BD

As usual for us, for the July contest we face the longest trip of the year: from Trento (JN56) to Majelletta (JN72), about 650 km (and the same on the way back). This time the excellent conditions of RS have allowed us to go far beyond our previous scoring records on the two bands we use, 5.7 and 10 GHz. Propagation has been good since the start of the contest and there have been several scatter zones useful both on Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, on the Thursday before the contest I broke my right wrist, being the only telegraphist in the group this could have obviously been a very serious problem, but fortunately it was not so. We worked mainly on 3cm making QSY on 6cm when asked. You can see the results in the table below; we are very satisfied!

The merit for this excellent result (national record) is mainly due to Giovanni IN3HOG who designed and built an extremely competitive portable station, helped in this by Bruno IN3CCD for the SW part and Livio IN3EDO for the remote control of the antenna movements. Together with Elio IN3UPQ they were already doing contests together when I still was a child. I am very happy that they later welcomed me into their group to work in CW and I hope I brought the contribution they expected.

A couple of words about the station: the transverters are an original creation by Giovanni who designed and built them (no kit, no preassembled parts). They are double conversion and from the starting band they go to the final 28MHz passing through a first conversion to about 900MHz (with an image-rejection mixer). The output power for both is 5W at the feed and NF is 1.8dB. The transverters are both mounted on the tripod that supports the dish (85cm offset) with its rotor for horizontal and vertical movements. Everything is controlled by a cable from Giovanni's car where there is a single operating station with two operators who work together on the same band. The transceiver used at 28 MHz is an Elad Duo.

See you next contest!
73, de Nicola IN3LBQ (cw op. at IN3HOG)                  in3hog_6cm_jul19.edi            in3hog_3cm_jul19.edi