Contest weekend at OE1W

06 September 2026 ·2 m

Back at the Traisnerhütte, back for twenty-four hours of the IARU Region 1 VHF contest — this time a few hours at the rig myself. Glorious weather, conditions you wish for, longest QSO 1,005 kilometres.

An antenna mast in silhouette against the twilight sky, the sun touching the horizon, a contrail above
Sep 5, 2026 · JN77TX

A year after the first visit I was back at the Traisnerhütte on the Muckenkogel above Lilienfeld, 1,313 metres, locator JN77TX. On the first weekend of September the IARU Region 1 VHF contest runs there on 144 MHz: from Saturday, 5 September, 16:00 to Sunday, 6 September, 16:00 local time — twenty-four hours without a break.

This time I wasn’t just there to watch. For a few hours I got to help out myself, at the rig and beside it.

Kenwood TS-890 with the Kuhne TR 144 Pro transverter and the Alinco power supply above it, the microHAM micro KEYER II on the left, the note reading OE1W JN77TX on the right

The weather, the band

Glorious weather, a cloudless sky over the whole weekend. The band was the same: conditions you wish for in a contest.

The longest QSO of the weekend went 1,005 kilometres — on two metres, with nothing but the antenna and whatever the troposphere was giving that day.

Two masts on the meadow against a deep blue sky, someone working at the right-hand mast

Three at the rig

There were three of us operating: Rainer, OE3REC, OE5LHM and me, OE5SOS. Whoever wasn’t on the microphone was logging, turning the antennas or simply listening.

Two operators with headsets at the desks, the laptop with the contest log in the foreground

When the sun sits low

A twenty-four-hour contest has two twilights, and both are among the finest hours up there. The yagis stand as lines against the sky, and when an aircraft passes it writes its own line across them.

Two stacked yagis on the mast against the evening sky, a contrail running right across the frame, mountain ridges below

Thanks

Many thanks to Rainer, OE3REC, for the invitation, and to everyone who made the weekend possible — for letting me take part this time instead of just watching.

73 · OE5SOS