[Moon-net] European Digital EME Contest 2008 (Two Meters)

[Edward Cole]

I only operated a few hours on both days.

Since Moonset was shortly after coming home from work Friday evening, 
I elected to start at 1900utc after Moonrise on Saturday.
Operating random (without skeds or logger) I found working thru the 
50 KHz digital band tedious.  I checked a few commonly used 
frequencies and discovered KB8RQ on 144.127.  Gary had a great signal 
at -13 on JT65 and calling him resulted in a quick QSO.  Thanks Gary.

I discovered VE3JWH on 144.120 calling CQ and attempts to call him 
were NG.  After that I got distracted by some travel planning that 
needed to be finished this last weekend.  When I got back to eme at 
2300 I discovered VK2KU calling on 144.140 and that resulted in a 
nice QSO.  Thanks Guy!

I went down and looked at what was happening on the logger out of 
curiosity and decided not to quit my random operation.  I did not 
operate any more on Saturday.

Sunday QRV for short time trying to call CQ on 144.116 and 
144.120.  Joe, K1JT heard me and called but we were not successful in 
a contact.  Joe's -13 signal faded into -27 after four sequences and 
disappeared on both H and V pol?

As reported before, operating random as a QRP station is not very 
effective.  The low declination resulted in a shorter window with 
Europe which doesn't help far-north stations like me, but probably 
helped the VK's, ZL's and other southern hemispheric stations.

I did not have my SDR-IQ running with Linrad and that tool is 
probably a big help in discovering activity without spending lots of 
time stepping thru the band 1KHz at a time.  I was not very 
successful with that strategy.  MAP65 when married with the SDR-IQ or 
other wideband receivers will make digital contesting "real 
fun"!  Looking forward to that.  Back to the workbench (8877 project).