At the beginning of February, I saw that LX7I will host the YCP for the ARRL DX SSB. I immediately applied after checking transportation. Three weeks after I was notified that I had been selected to be one of the youngsters to go to LX land. We all arrived on Friday afternoon and after a first get-together, we start to get sorted in the shack.
For this experience I met the other team members: HA8RT, DK4EE, DL8GM, DC2CL or Tomi, Louis, Markus and Claudia. It was a really good time with them at the station, sharing experiences, discussing the hobby in our own respective countries and enjoying simple off-air time or pile-up time.
As expected from a Multi-one, Multi-two and Multi-Multi (all in one HI), LX7I station is well organized, the antenna dispatch system is great.
The 22 antennas on the 6 towers, full sized beams, stacked beams, fixed or not, dipoles, verticals, (plus the RX beverages) were awesome for me. As a fan of large antennas, stacking methods, performance comparison, speaking with LX2A Phillipe, the owner of the station, was a great pleasure. It was also very interesting to see the background of a big gun station and its evolution.
It was not my first experience in contesting, but there have been lots of first times @LX7I for me: my first radio operation outside F land as LX/F4HWS, my first ARRL DX SSB, my first time operating monobander Yagi on 40 and stacks on upper bands and my first time in M2 category.
I love the feeling of challenge operation though the friendship relation that you can create on the air and in the shack of course!
The best memories of this WE in LX was the arrival with the meeting of everyone, the warming up session with good pile up from LX/F4HWS, LX/DK3EE, LX/DC2CL, the off times with the group, and the last minutes of the contest at night, fingers crossed, with all the team in the shack, behind Tomi on 80M and Louis on 160M fighting for our last QSO: a new multiplier on the top band!
Finally, competition with ED1R, E7DX and LZ5R was intense and excitement has increased with the live score sharing web site, “cqcontest.net”.
I think that every youngster of the YOTA group who is interested by this type of event or contests should definitely apply. This is a great opportunity to operate big stations, get more experience with ham radio, meet great people, contesters, and friends, and finally to have fun in what they like.
Thanks to everyone, see you for the next one.
LX7I YCP Team, Tom F4HWS.
