This weekend was the Africa All Mode International DX Contest. I’m not a contest station but I like to use contests to try things out, in this case it was not successful! Looking at the HF predictions propagation down to Africa from the UK was looking a little tricky but the late afternoon looked like a good chance on the 10 and 20m bands. With that in mind I constructed a 10m band dipole antenna at 5.5 elevation and a 20m band droopy dipole both aimed in the right direction.

Roll on late afternoon and armed with the log book, some beers to keep things rolling and my portable 100w setup I was ready to go… however the bands were dead. Some QSOs into Spain, Serbia and Russia proved the setup was working but no stations were heard from Africa. It seems I wasn’t the only one… VE9CF’s reflections on the SARL All Mode DX Contest.

Never mind, hopefully next time will see better participation, it was still a worthwhile experience to set up and test some of my equipment – lesson learnt; my dipole antennas need stronger fixings at the end of the elements. Two came loose in testing.