Looking forward to the AFD PSK contest this weekend

Since I got my IMD meter recently, I’ve been looking forward to the AFD PSK contest this weekend.  It’s only the second time it’s been run and I gave away a few points last year.  From what I remember, it seemed a lot more relaxed than some of the bigger contests.  The contest runs from 00:00 to 11:59 (local time, no matter where you are) on Sunday.

It’s on all non-WARC bands from 80m to 10m and uses PSK31 and PSK63.  The initial call should be “CQ AFD TEST” and the exchange is simply signal report and a serial number which increments with each QSO.  Scoring is 1 point for QSOs within your own continent and 3 points for QSOs on other continents on 10m, 15m and 20m and 2/6 points on 40m and 80m.  Multipliers are DXCC entities and further details can be found on the official website here.

I’m going to retune my Cushcraft MA-5B again on Saturday to the bottom end of 20m and will be having a shout in this contest, probably concentrating on 15m and 20m.  Hopefully I’ll get some replies!

On the subject of the Cushcraft MA-5B, I’m seriously thinking about changing it.  It works really well and I’ve had great results but unfortunately it only has a narrow bandwidth on 20m (as can be seen here).  I want to be able to use the aerial on both the data and phone segments of the band and so I keep having to lower the mast, adjust the aerial and raise the mast again which doesn’t take very long to do, it’s just a pain.  The ATU inside the TS-590 will tune it over the whole of the band perfectly but that doesn’t help if I want to use the amplifier so I’m looking around for alternatives.  The one which jumps out at me immediately is the Hexbeam from G3TXQ which will give me the bandwidth I need but also more gain and better F/B than the Cushcraft especially on 12m and 17m where the MA-5B is just a rotary dipole.

2 Comments

Add a Comment
  1. Hello Keith, can you correct the link you provide for the AFD test. It does direct right back to here. I’m curious as it doesn’t appear om my contestcalendar. 73, Bas

  2. Ahhh, I see….I think we can only find the link this Sunday ;-)…..73, Bas

Leave a Reply to Bas PE4BASCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.