This year's long May weekend we spent at my in-laws house.
May in Poland starts with International Workers' Day, National Day, then we have Flags Day, which is a normal
day, then we have the Constitution of 3 May National Holiday. It should not be a surprise that Poles take a dayoff on the second day of May for “long weekend”. This year me and my wife took a whole week to spend some timewith her relatives.🖼️ My May shack. Decided to take some dust off my M0NKA clone.
Deploying an antenna from the room where I slept was easy -- last time I had an end-fed unun on a window frame
and wire going out and attached to a fence. This time I wanted to do the same thing, but with EFHW for 40 metersand up and a dipole for 80 meters.🖼️ Unun hung on a window frame. Works.
The problem was I took too little wire to make anything usable with it, so I ended up soldering all the wires I
had together to make an end-fed antenna for 80 meters. Another issue was that there was not enough space forsuch a long antenna, so I had to bend it. I did ir before, but with more obtuse angles, this time it was almosta straight angle.🖼️ My end-fed, bent in the middle. Brownish thing is a cord attached to the fence.
I did not have any plans for the long weekend, except two points: some sightseeing with my daughter and her two
cousins and… Constitution of 3 May Contest.🖼️ “Constitution of 3 May 1791”, oil painting on canvas by the Polish artist Jan Matejko (1891)
About 30 minutes before the contest was about to start, the 80 meters band was totally silent. I heard absolutely
nothing. I saw some spots from Europe on RBN, but heard nothing. I was really afraid that the contest was overfor me before it started, but, no. In the first two minutes I worked SP3ZHP and then SP1AEN, and believe me,SP1AEN had plenty of callers. With my 10 Watts and antenna at the height of my nose I focused on searching andpouncing.There were just about 60 CW participants in the contest, so it was possible to work almost everyone.
It is not a miracle, but I think I developed a strategy for small contests when using a low-power rig. First,
work with everyone using RBN for help. After you worked everyone tune to the frequency occupied by anystation a while ago, but now clear, and call CQ there. Make sure you have enough “space” between adjacentstations. Pay attention to the band map and if there is a new station quit CQ and pounce it. I worked about 10stations as a runner out of 47 total contacts.🖼️ PA got warm, the whole case was warm… I have to find some kind of heat sink!
Some of my friends do not like Polish contests and its rules, and Constitution Day Contest is a great example
why. There were two categories for stations from Warsaw, but there is no category for single-op CW only. And,there is no category for QRP stations. The other reason is that Polish hams tend to work QRO in small, national,contests.🖼️ Categories in the aforementioned contest.
Will I win? No… But I have strong belief that I worked with almost every CW participant and gained almost all
points.Wednesday was my CWT day. I skipped 1300 UTC, and at 1900 UTC made 39 contacts. This time I worked QRP 5W and in
search and pounce mode almost exclusively. This was possible only thanks to the Reverse Beacon Network. I alsostarted on Thursday morning with 21 contacts in the log. I could not “clear out the bandmap” and decided to callCQ a few times in both sessions. Yes, I caught some fish on my 5W hook!🖼️ Bonus: I managed to connect my M0NKA clone to N1MM -- this is how.
