Every year on May 1st the Österreichische Versuchssenderverband ist organizing a ham radio contest called AOEE or All OE Emergency Exercise (Rules). The purpose of the exercise is to contact as many regional districts as possible, with extra points awarded for working special callsigns. Also every year, my ham radio club – AMRS ADL-055 Wels – is going on air with our club callsign OE5XCL. In the break between the morning and the evening sessions my fellow club membery enjoy a hearty barbecue.
Unfortunately, in previous years family obligations and generally being out of country (sometimes on SOTA-outings) prevented my participation. However, this year I felt I could try and participated as a battery-only powered station, leveraging my portable ham radio know-how aquired during many SOTA activations.
In order to also promote ham radio and chat up some local citizens I decided to set-up my portable station in front of Pregarten’s (my QTH) St. Anna church.
As an antenna I was using an EFHW for 40 m set-up in an inverted-L configuration using two extensible GFK masts.
My radio configuration consisted of my trusted Yaesu FT-817ND which in turn was driving my self-assembled Hardrock-50 HF power amplifier with builtin ATU. Both transceiver and power amplifier were supplied using 4S LiFePo battery packs (3100 mAh and 4100 mAh respectively).
Log data was collected on my laptop using OE5JFE‘s OpenLoggerAOEE. Additionally I kept my brand-new Elecraft KX2 nearby, in case of unexpectedly draining the LiFePo batteries or running into other unforeseen problems. In the end, except for a short stint on 80 m I was running the Yaesu/Hardrock combination.
Finally I was able to conduct 61 QSOs contacting ham radio operators in all 9 federal regions (though not all regional districts). More importantly, I greatly enjoyed participating and hope I’ll be able to so again next year.
