As is tradition every year, before the IARU HF Championship, I visited the SO4M station to prepare it for the contest alongside my friends. For many years now, we’ve been participating as one of the locations for our national headquarters station, SN0HQ. We always use this time to carry out maintenance and repair work: at a big-gun station, there’s always something to fix, inspect, replace or improve.
Among other tasks, we restored the Cubical Quad multiplier antenna (we replaced some of the feeders), configured a new set of filters and checked the low-band receive antennas etc. And of course we prepared the entire setup for the contest itself. This year, our site operated as the RUN station on 40m SSB and as a support station on 20m CW.
I had to leave on Saturday before the contest actually started but spending a few days at the station was a fantastic experience as always. It’s always a great chance to catch up with friends, have a good time, and enjoy our wonderful hobby together.
This time, the entire operation – preparations included – involved: SP4MPG, SQ4NR, SQ2RAD, SP5C, SP5UAF, SP5UFK, and SQ5IRO. Of course we were supported remotely by our friends who were not able to come (especially SQ6MS).
