This weekend was the SPDX contest. In the SP DX Contest, competitors are divided into two groups – Polish stations and foreign stations outside of Poland. The aim is for operators outside of Poland to make as many QSOs to Polish stations and visa versa.

As I’m currently on holiday I thought this would be a great opportunity to experiment with portable operation over a relatively short distance – around 1600km from the UK. I’m currently borrowing Codan Sentry 6110, a military manpack radio which should be ideal for the task!

On the Saturday of the contest I activated twice for 15 minutes at a time, once from a park bench on a walk with my son and once from the courtyard of the house I’m staying at in North Devon. Both times I used the whip antenna and the maximum 30w output power from the radio and made 5 QSOs on each activation.

On the Sunday we were out as a family visiting a local tourist attraction when I spotted a perfect ‘flagpole of opportunity’. I slipped away from the family for 20 minutes to make 10 contest QSOs plus three bonus QSOs – 2x POTA and 1x SOTA.

This 10m flagpole was ideal for my 20m band double bazooka dipole which worked perfectly in an inverted v configuration!