Late Saturday evening I got a message from a Dutch Ham that James M6JCX has launched a experimental balloon from Cambridge, UK. At that time the last position report was about 5 km west of my QTH.
As it was dark and way to late I went near to that location yesterday morning for a little search. Later a prediction for a possible landing location was about 10 km to the east, but also no luck there yesterday....

This afternoon, after work I went back and searched for it just south of the village called Ottoland. At 17:00 local time (16:00 UTC) I heared the CW beacon very weak. The beacon comes from a small 10 miliWatt transmitter with a transponder at a frequency of 434.072 MHz.

Tomorrow I will go back to that area and try to triangulate the signals into a position so I can recover the balloon and the equipment. I hope the weather is better than it was today....

The second full weekend in February is always a contest weekend at our local club: time for the Dutch PACC Contest.
For us at PI4VAD it is more than only contesting. We want to have some fun as well. And most important on the contest weekend is the Gourmet-dinner at Saturday evening.

We don't have a large contest crew but we try to keep two shacks running at the same time for the full 24 hours. We worked both in CW and Phone on most of the bands.
Within a day after the contest we already have new ideas and plans for next year, so we have some work to do the upcoming 51 weeks.

We made a short video from our activities. You can watch it on YouTube.

Unfortunately I can't talk to all of you personally via the ham radio bands during these last days of december.
That's why I wish you and your family all the best for the upcoming year!
May the airwaves be with you in 2010 with lots of nice contacts and good DX!

73, Elmar PD3EM

We had ideas for this since the september Fieldday: Doing a small Fieldday in wintertime when it was cold and if possible with snow!
The last week it has been freezing. The last couple of days we had some snow and temperatures stayed below zero also during the daytime. So today was the right time to do it. It was -7 °C, the fields where covered with 5 centimeter of snow and the sun was shining.

Peter PD1AJJ and I went to one of our favorite fieldday locations in the surrounding polders. When we arrived it was quite busy with about 15 hunters. They were just ready with a Brown Hares hunt so we first had a chat with them. After that we both setup our FT-817's and Outback 1899's and made our first QSO's within a few minutes.

I made two transatlantic QSO's with just 3 watt. First with Robert VE3KZ and 15 minutes later with clubstation VE3MIS. They were both in the Canadian Winter Contest.

Due to the cold the 7Ah battery couldn't give enough power to allow the FT-817 to put the full 5 watts QRP power into the antenna. The maximum output power was just 3 watt. But that is what all the fun is about: making a QSO with a station 6000 km away with less power than a bicycle light uses!!

After a while the sun was covered with clouds and more wind came up. The windchill dropped and we decided to come back another time. No more /P/QRP/Cold for today ;-)

You can see more pictures in Peter's Midwinter Fieldday photo album.

Almost everyone has written about it in the last 24 hours: The new sunspots in Cycle 24.
It started yesterday with 26 sunspots. Today it came to a new Cycle 24 record: 31 sunspots. Also the solar flux came to a new maximum: 76.
I hope these sunspots are the real beginning of this new Solar Cycle.

Last Saturday and Sunday it was time again to do a little contesting. Unfortunately I didn't had the time to make it a full-time contest weekend. I worked a few hours behind the rig on Saturday evening and on Sunday.

The Worked All Europe Contest is a very nice contest but it's always hard to get through the pile-ups with just 25 watts. Sometimes it was a one-call QSO but some others took much more time.

Sunday morning there suddenly was an opening towards the Caribbean on 40 meters. I was very glad that I could work Peter PJ4NX and Ted HI3TEJ on that band!

The first weekend of September is on the calendar as IARU Region 1 SSB Fieldday. That's why I drove to a nearby field location with a few members of our club PI4VAD.
It was not our intention to participate as a fieldday contest station. We go out for fun and the eyeball QSO's.
This time I was QRV within a few minutes after arriving with my Yaesu FT-817 QRP rig and Outback 1899 vertical. Maybe next time I'll put up my masts and windom antenna. That next time can be the upcoming "Snowball Fieldday". Peter PD1AJJ ans I have some ideas for organizing a cold-winter-fieldday.
On the bands were a lot of stations working in the All Asia DX Contest. I hope that contest will be in another weekend next year.

I've heard him numerous times calling to the same stations as I was on HF but we never met and we never made a QSO. But today Arie PD0ARI dropped us a visit on the Fieldday location. It's always very nice to meet the hams you hear and shake hands for a Eyeball QSO.

Yesterday evening we had a sked on 40 meter with two of our club members who were in F and EA land.
The signals on the band were all very strong. Not a single one was below S9 as you can see in the bandscope above.
Gerrit was working with about 300 Watt from the south of France, Tjakko was working mobile with 100 Watt from Northern Spain, Henk with 100 Watt from Dordrecht and I was running the usual 25 Watt but we could make a nice QSO with the four of us.
That was between 19:00 and 19:30 UTC and a little later I heard some stations from South America on 40 meter. Unfortunately I couldn't log a QSO with them.

An absolute new design.... the Spider-GP! No more buzzing sounds in your ears during the evening and night. All of this due to this Spider-GP!

Unfortunately, this is only outside and not in the shack...
There seems to be more and more spiders every year. Every morning it's a struggle to to walk outside the house without getting a spiderweb in my face.

There are spiders everywhere and also a few dozen on my Diamond CP-6 vertical antenna. The only problem for DX is that they don't give me a dB extra gain....

Time to do some antenna cleaning soon! If you have an idea, please let me know.