Sunday, May 24, 2015

PA45FREEDOM - a weekend at Winssen

The weekend of May 16 & 17 we planned to gather most of the P*45FREE operators in Winssen on a camping place we already used before during the PACC contest this year. 

The idea was to activate a special group call PA45FREEDOM on several bands simultaneously during the weekend.

YNOMY was present with PD7YY (PD45FREE), PG8M (PG45FREE) and PH0NO (PH45FREE). We were joined by PA1WBU (PA45FREE), PA3BAS (PB45FREE) and PA3FYG (PC45FREE).


Temporary shacks of  Hans PC45FREE and Bas PB45FREE (to the left of the picture)
Bas PA3BAS had not been able to work a lot of stations using his own special callsign (PB45FREE), so he used that call from Winssen. The others operated PA45FREEDOM.



Main shack with two running stations 40m-6m

We used up to five different radios in parallel. Hans PA3FYG and Bas PA3BAS operated from two different corners of the field, the others were operating in or (weather permitting) around the mobile home we rented for the weekend. We used wire antennas, a 6m beam, a 2m beam and a hexbeam.

Even with band filters we did have to fight some interference between the stations but during this weekend PA45FREEDOM managed to log 1331 calls from 1237 different operators in 69 different DXCC.

Although the weather was not as we hoped for (cloudy with some rain) - we did enjoy the field-day-mandatory-BBQ. 


PG8M providing the necessary food