Operating 2o12L and Mo0BGR

I got up early this morning to operate 2o12L (http://www.2o12L.com. Good session on 20m CW (Morse). Band condiitons were not great but lots of European stations and a few Asiatic Russians worked. I had hoped for some Far East stations, but conditions were not up to this. Unfortunately there were still lots calling when I had to close down to go to work (http://www.howardcommunications.ltd.uk) :-(



2o12L Antennas (some of them!).



Last night, I worked CW (Morse) on 30m from my own station Mo0BGR. Someone kindly 'spotted' me on the DX cluster so I got a nice run of stations. Nothing like a 2o12L pile up, as my station is slightly more modest, but it still kept me busy for a while.

French CW Contest

I took part in the REF French CW contest this weekend (Championnat de France HF Télégraphie). I am not a great contester, or CW operator, but this event was a delight to take part in.

The object is to work as many French stations as possible. Foreign stations send RST + Serial, French stations send RST + Department Number - these are the multipliers and as there are 96 of them plus 11 overseas territories and Departments, there's plenty to go for.

The nice thing about this contest was that very few French stations were sending stupidly fast and secondly, they were all very polite - a massive contrast to the normal scrum of most CW contests. This would be a very good event to start with if you are thinking of trying a CW contest but are intimidated by what you hear in most events.

It takes place on the last full weekend of January (with the SSB contest the last weekend of February) and runs from 6am Saturday until 6 pm (UTC) Sunday. As the exchanges are numeric, you don't even need to speak French!

Full details are on http://concours.ref-union.org/reglements/index.php with the rules in several languages.

Thanks to the RÉSEAU DES ÉMETTEURS FRANÇAIS / UNION FRANÇAISE DES RADIOAMATEURS for running this event.