Field Day Station View

Then returned back during Saturday while Dad (M3JFM) and myself were out cycling enjoying the Oxfordshire/Edge of Buckinghamshire country side, most of the station was finally setup when we arrived although the generator died just as we arrived on site 2 hours before the contest started thankfully we managed to get one hour before the start, returning home later that evening via a pub stop to refuel for the 10miles cycle home.

Friday team busy at work!

During the weekend I also managed with the help of MixW to work 38 field day stations mixed across 80/40/20/15/10m which I was more then happy with, hopefully next year will be just as good!

You can find the rest of the photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/m3php/sets/72157624080291655/

Conditions seemed rather bad, rates even for S&P where terrible but never the less QSOs went into my logbook, what I was surprised at was the 3 strong signalled JAs which I managed to work first call on 20m, after a couple of hours I ended up with

• Total QSOs: 53
• Best Stations: JA, VE1, W1

Ended up with 80 QSOs, mixed across 40m to 15m.

Summary:

	QSO	DX	JA	W	VE	VK	Cont
40m	8	7	0	0	0	0	1
20m	67	28	0	4	1	0	4
15m	5	1	0	3	0	0	1
Total	80	28	0	6	1	0	4

Score: 80*(28+0+6+1+0)*4 = 11200 points

Made an enjoyable Saturday in the shack, look forward to a contest in the new year.

Summary:

 BAND   QSO
--------------
  160     0
   80     4
   40    34
   20    66
   15     0
   10     0
--------------
TOTAL   104
==============

Callsign: 2E0SQL
Equipment: Yaesu FT-950, Signalink USB, 80m Windom and MixW.

I arrived at the station Friday afternoon, and we were soon out in the field doing some finishing touches on the 4 square that Paul (G6PZ) had been working on over the last couple of weeks, and cranked up the MonstIR to its full height I can tell you that’s no easy job!

Simon (M0CLW)

The contest started and didn’t seem to easy going and we found it hard getting any large NA runs on 40m due to lots of QRM, but non the less a steady stream of QSOs where being worked and 80m was near enough the same but picked up slightly at sun rise.

Peter (G4MJS)

During the day we were pleased to see that 15/10m opened up giving us some much needed QSOs and Mults, we spend some time on these bands then moved to 20m later on in the day. During the day we also finished building the quarter wave 160m vertical and laid some much needed radials.

Sunday conditions seemed very much the same, with 15/10m being full of stations during the daytime and during the final hour of the contest 160m gave us a good run of North American stations, and with the new 4sq on 80m it certainly made made us feel loud.

Overall a very enjoyable weekend contesting and socialising with the team! I’m looking forward to the next contest already.

Conditions overall seemed reasonable considering the lack of sunspots, but still managed to work some decent stuff including JS3 & E21 on 20m, ZS2 on 15m, which was an improvement over last year when I didn’t work any JA what so ever.

What I did find with this contest was that I got a lot of “AGN” whether this was because I wasn’t in the SCP database or they didn’t quite believe the callsign I don’t know time will sure tell though.

Sadly I didn’t work anything on 80m, I did hear a lot of stations but for some reason people just couldn’t hear me, so most of the QSOs are on 20/40m with a couple on 15m.

Break down can be found below

 BAND   QSO DUP MLTS  POINTS   AVG
-----------------------------------
   80     0   0    0       0  0.00
   40    39   0   20      86  2.21
   20   126   0   36     287  2.28
   15    11   0    4      24  2.18
   10     0   0    0       0  0.00
-----------------------------------
TOTAL   176   0   60     397  2.26
===================================
       TOTAL SCORE : 23 820

The last hour before the end of the contest also seemed reasonable picked up a few more mults on 20/15/10m and even a KB1 and VE* station on 20m ending up with a non spectacular 79 QSOs and a score of 8142 points.

Equipment: Yaesu FT-950, 80m Windom and Win-Test.

Friday morning soon arrived and I took the train down to the station, unlucky for me there was signalling problems between Swindon and Bristol which messed things up a bit and I had to change twice around the edge of Bristol before catching a connection to Weston but arrived and met by Mark (M0DXR), Simon (M0CLW) and Simon (2E0CVN).

Once arriving at the shack there was some antenna work to be done like cranking up the MonstIR which was seriously hard work as the antenna weights a ton! after a while though we soon had it up. and finished putting up the Clark field mast up which Paul had already setup and got it up to 30m it looked huge! which was to support the 160m antenna once we built that.. once all the antennas were up it was dark and we retreated to the shack to get the computers setup.

Simon (M0CLW) on mults duty

The contest started soon after and I was on the mults station on 40m was easy to pick-up the multipliers then but as the hours progressed it soon started to get harder, we did have an issue in the very early hours when the 160m antenna wouldn’t tune! but that was soon fixed in daylight, but we got some good runs into NA on 40m and good conditions into the far east. Conditions Sunday towards the end of the contest were not so great.

Score breakdown

 BAND   QSO DUP  PFX  POINTS   AVG
-----------------------------------
  160   145   0   37     294  2.03
   80   743   8  317    1784  2.40
   40   868   8  317    2987  3.44
   20  1438   8  415    3218  2.24
   15   127   0   75     337  2.65
   10     0   0    0       0  0.00
-----------------------------------
TOTAL  3321  24 1161    8620  2.60
===================================
     TOTAL SCORE : 10 007 820

The beams

The station performed great and was a breeze to use the IC7800 & IC7700 and we put the built in voice keyers to good use, all the options seemed in similar places on both and the filtering was effective for contesting environment. The stacked SteppIRs were excellent making working into NA pretty easy! and having a beam on 40m was very cool.

Overall had a fantastic weekend, great company and decent pileups, I was however was completely shattered Monday morning while returning home!

Best DX was probably being called by a JA on 20m Saturday morning just before lunch and J5 and LT0 in the evening, sadly didn’t manage to work any VK but think that’s bad timing on my part.

Station Equipment: Yaesu FT-950, Radioworks 80m Windom, Signalink USB and MixW.

Summary:

       QSO    DX    JA    W    VE    VK    Cont
80m    18     12    0     0    0     0     1
40m    42     19    0     2    1     0     3
20m    71     30    1     6    3     0     5
Total  131    40    1     6    3     0     5

Score: 131*(40+1+6+3+0)*5 = 32750 points

Tweets get sent out every Wednesday at 13:30 UTC I decided on this day because it was mid week, when people are starting to think about the upcoming week if anyone disagrees leave a comment.

Each contest for the coming weekend gets its own tweet with the contest name and the url to find the rules. So if your a twitter user follow @DXAnywhere plus you’ll get a wealth of other useful radio data in your twitter stream!