Summer VHF Activity Challenge 2023

Here are the final results of the GMDX Summer VHF Activity Challenge.  

Well who would have guessed that probably the best conditions of the year turned up just before the activity period ended! Great news for all and lots of far east was worked by several op's. A few reported they had worked their first ever JA station on 6m. Other exotica was worked with stations in HL and BD going in some logs. 4m opened up nicely on Sunday morning just when I was out walking the dog of course. I managed a couple of TF squares and a few other squares before it died out.

 The final sccores

As he has been since the start, Martin GM8IEM is miles ahead in both 6m and 4m with a grand total of 452 squares, 106 ahead of 2^ndplace. He clearly put in a big effort from his northerly station for the whole period on both bands. All QSO’s were FT8.

2nd and 3rd was a real fight to the death between Col MM0NDX and Gordon MM0GOR. Gordon just pipped Col 346 v 339 squares. Gordon probably shaded it due to working stations on 6m and 4m on all modes where Col used only 6m FT8. Gordon told me that he didn’t have a 4m antenna but used his 6m 3 ele beam and presumably a tuner to force some low power RF into it which ultimately resulted in 20 squares on 70 Mhz thanks to FT8.

Other notables:

GM4ATA operated CW/SSB only with 47 CW squares. John told me that it was a huge struggle in the final week to find any new squares and I think he may have missed the big opening.

 Thanks to all for entering the challenge and I hope it was enjoyable despite some pretty poor conditions over the period. I do hope to run it again next year and after some user feedback, I think I will run it earlier to hopefully align with the start of the sporadic E season and perhaps for a 6 week period. Please let me know your thoughts.

Finally, it would be great if some op’s could send in a short report of their Challenge particularly with a photo or two of their station for a GMDX Digest VHF article and for the website

 73

Gordon