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  • CQ Amateur Radio

    CONTESTING

    Sep 01, 2021 7 minutes
    BY TIM SHOPPA,* N3QE

    Plus, Getting in Practice for WRTC-23 and a Mini-DXpedition to Bimini

    Two U.S. qualifiers for WRTC-23 tried contesting this summer from southern Europe. Rich DiDonna, NN3W, and Jon Kimball, KL2A, traveled to the Adriatic to operate contest station 4O3A for the 24-hour IARU HF contest in July.

    “This was an effort to get some needed perspective”, Jon tells me. Both Rich and Jon qualified for the World Radiosport Team Championship to be held in Italy in 2023, and used their trip and contest operation as an opportunity to build up experience with summer HF propagation in southern Europe. Photo A shows Jon and Rich with their hosts, Ranco Boca, 4O3A; Marko Tomasevic, 4O9TTT; and Dragisa Boca, 4O9ITT.

    Jon tells me of the 4O3A team’s effort to modernize contesting technology. You can see the payoff in Photo B, where Rich operates the station from an air-conditioned office space. Jon tells me “Ranco’s ideas are coming to life and [there are] many more ideas coming that will certainly shake things up.”

    Rich’s first comment was related to the large density of stations in that part of Europe: “In southern Europe, the pile

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