For years, the Xmas contest has virtually been my only ham radio activity. This year, after I had to take down the antenna in my parents' yard, I put up the 40m part of a 80/40m dipole in the attic of my flat in Saarbrücken. The first tests were satisfying so I drove back to Saarbrücken for December 26th.

The contest started nice with a S9+50 signal from DR5S - of course DOK Q10 meant it was just very close. Unfortunately, things turned out much worse. The antenna wasn't as matched as I had hoped and I had to put my small MFJ tuner in. But, whatever I would tune to, the 1:1 would only withstand some second of transmission and I had to retune. The 1:1 there would pop back up, and I had to retune back to the original settings. GOTO 10.

After a bit more than one hour I gave up. The final log is here:

8.33	3.543	DR5S	599 Q02	599 Q10
8.42	7.016	DL0CS	599 Q02	599 M15
8.43	7.016	G4OGD	599 Q02	599 004
8.50	7.013	OK5MM	599 Q02	599 019
9.38	3.545	DK9IP	599 Q02	599 A24

I don't know where the fault was, in the TRX, the tuner, or the antenna. I hope it is not the TRX.