I did another RTTY contest, this time it was organized from the radio amateur organization in the Czech Republic.

For me it was a way to try out my mobile 40m band antenna which I bought and put up a few weeks ago.

Hamstick 40m Band

In this picture the left antenne is the 40m band hamstick. It’s a mobile antenna but still 2.25 meters long so if you stick it on your car, watch out for parking garages and the like! 😉

The 40m band needs normally a long antenna so it’s almost impossible to have a mobile antenna that’s effective on the lower bands, like the 40m band. I was skeptical as to what I could expect from it but I was surprised! I only did about 30 contacts during the contest day with this antenna and it was during the day so DX-ing wash’t really possible. Still the results were not bad.

The furthest I got with the hamstick was Kazakhstan (UN1L), which is a little less than 4000km for me. Not bad for a hamstick on 40m!

On the DX bands my furthest contact was the USA (W9MU in Illinois) on 15m; this was about 6600km. On those bands I used my trusty dipoles for 10m, 15m and 20m.