Report on the Dubus 23cm CW contest weekend

This was my first experience of a 23cm Dubus CW event and I had great fun! I'm not sure why there is so much concern about the demise of CW, it seems alive and well on 23cms! If only we could encourage more activity outside the contests. Only surprise was the lack of Americans, I didn't hear one the whole weekend! 

Running just 120 Watts (my power seems a little down) to a 1.9m RF-Ham design dish with the excellent SM6FHZ patch feed and a 0.2dB G4DDK VLNA23 I worked 19 stations on CW and 2 on JT.

23cm Initials were HB9CW, SP7DCS, OK1CA, SP6JLW, OK1KIR, ES5PC, OZ4MM, F5SE/P on CW plus G4DDK and ZS6JON on JT.

Notable "got aways" were PA3DZL, DL1YMK, DJ8FR, and DL6SH Jac was quite weak, but the latter 3 of that list were stronger than many I worked but just didn't hear me, despite endless calling. Most unusual!

I found that "search and pounce" worked much better for me, calling CQ brought some QSOs and a couple of stations that were just too weak for me to work, which made me question the reciprocity of the 3 in the list above, or maybe it was just QRM?

The slow QSB was very different to what I've experienced on 13cm with the fade rate being "just right" to take out Morse characters!

In all, great fun, and it made me think that the "demise of CW" that some bang on about is just down to the problem even the terrestrial microwave bands suffer from, namely  lack of people bothering to come on and transmit, instead, checking the internet, seeing no activity and not switching the rigs on!