CW QSO between ‘Twinned Towns’ Bracknell UK & Leverkusen, Germany

Our QSO with DL0IL/P this morning went very well. The Leverkusen field
station on 40m was an excellent signal here, 599+, and we got good
reports from them. Me, Mike G4DDL and then Gopan M0XUU had a 15 minute
chat at around 25wpm with Joe DL4KCA on the key. Also in the tent were
Ben DO1BEN, Andy and Jurgen – Ben said there were fewer members there
today as it was in working day times. Initially a bit of confusion as
Gopan had been listening on 7025, we were 1kHz up the band…. DL0IL/P
signal should have been strong, they were using 700W into a trap dipole
at 30m, our antennas can’t compete with that. They at least had sunny
weather, 20C, unlike over here!

We then went down to 30m though that was less successful. As I had
noted earlier the critical frequency from Propquest was quite low
around 5MHz so the 500km predicted muf to Leverkusen was not much over
7MHz. Their signals were quite copyable at 579 here but I only got a
439 report. We all exchanged reports but it was marginal and Gopal was
almost out of skip range so only just copyable here.

Rig here FT710, 5W, 75ft longwire. G4DDL FTDX101, 100W and
longwire/loop.

Overall a very successful morning. Thanks Ben for organising and Joe for
chatting to us.

73 Dave G3YMC

Nice QSO today with DL0IL/P

I found 40m was very good and all stations were strong with me, 30m was not as good though DL0IL/P was quite strong. Goran was a good signal on 40 but quite weak on 30m but on 30 I was using my loop antenna as the local QRN from all manner of devices was stronger than the signals. My TX signal on the long wire is better, I should have set the RX to receive on the loop and TX on the Longwire but forgot. It works well like that on 160m and 80m.

It was great to QSO Leverkusen again after so many years, we did it many times in the past and had visits from their club members.

73 to all
Mike G4DDL

PS: Please forgive my poor German in CW, it is hard to spell in German and send it in Morse at the same time. I last studied German at school in 1965!

Thanks for the contacts Ben/Joe.

Good summary Dave, I was running IC7300 200w into a doublet.

73 Gopan M0XUU