2E0SQL - M3PHP » contest

WAE RTTY Contest

Peter — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:44:38 +0000

Last weekend I decided to have a little dabble in the WAE RTTY Contest, this wasn’t a serious effort; more a have a play and see what could be added to my logbook. Doing a little bit of search and pounce and in the end called CQ a few times, but only got very short runs on 20 and 80m (the only QSOs on the band).

I found conditions hard going, but they didn’t look any different to the usual averages; so I’m guessing this was purely related to the antennas 1/2 G5RV and a 80m quarter wave L and the 50w from the Yaesu FT-950 none the less I had fun. This was also the first contest where I used Win-Test, for the whole operation with MMTTY and it worked pretty much flawlessly. Only one issue where clicking on the DX Cluster spots; it would switch the rig to LSB which got very annoying, but this was down to operating in AFSK I believe.

Total operating time was 7 hours 26 minutes according to Win-Test, and I can report some reasonable stuff worked including Japan and Mexico and lots of North America (All bands but 80m!) ending up with 200 QSOs.

Summary:

 BAND   QSO DUP MLTS   QTC  POINTS   AVG
-----------------------------------------
   80    14   0    5     0      14  1.00
   40    55   0   21     0      55  1.00
   20    83   0   34     0      83  1.00
   15    18   0   13     0      18  1.00
   10    30   0   16     0      30  1.00
-----------------------------------------
TOTAL   200   0  209     0     200  1.00
=========================================
          TOTAL SCORE : 41 800

SSB Field Day with the Oxford & D.A.R.S

Peter — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 16:49:40 +0000

I know this is a little bit late considering SSB Field day was nearly 2 weeks ago, but it’s been a busy few weeks so blogging had to take a back seat! This year I took part in SSB Field day with the Oxford & DARS, like normal from the site at Horspath which is on the edge of the city close to the BMW Mini factory.

Setup went to plan and we had the Force12 C31XR, 40/80m Dipoles and the RX station vertical setup along with K3s, Yaesu Quadra Linear and the computers ready to go before the kick off, what we wasn’t expecting was the poor conditions. It was nearly impossible to get any sort of run on 20/15/10m and lots of the stations in the All Asian contest flatly refused to work us and sometimes in a pretty rude manor (Think they need to chill out a bit?).

Never the less we plodded on and worked what we could. After fish/sausages/chips for dinner, conditions seemed to start to pickup and I managed to get a few small runs to North America then about 11pm till 1am managed a big pile up to the States which was good fun and boosted callsigns in the logbook no end.

40m was also a pretty decent band through the night but we had problems on 80m due to lots of static crashes. This always seemed to happen around the time of the other station giving the serial number which got very frustrating.

Sun rise soon appeared Sunday morning and after working a bit of DX on 40m we shifted back to 20m to be greeted with a reasonable pile up for a while, then rest was spent calling CQ and working multipliers which the Spotting station was passing across. One problem I did find was due to vision being a bit poor sometimes missed the “spots” showing on the logbook!

Like normal soon as the contest was due to finish the heavens decided to open, but thankfully by the time it got to taking the tents down they’d nearly dried off which was lucky. We ended up at the end of the contest with about 1102 QSOs including dupes, and we’ve got plenty of ideas on how to improve the score next year.

RSGB 70cms UKAC

Peter — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 11:18:20 +0000

Last night, I decided to have a play in the RSGB 70cms UKAC that was after a reminder earlier in the day from Gavin (M1BXF) . Conditions didn’t seem too bad within minutes of the start of the contest I heard F8BRK although was unable to work him no doubt a bigger beam would have solved that issue though.

What I did seem to manage to work was stations in squares IO81, IO91, IO92, JO01 and JO02 and according to Win-Test best DX was G3PYE/P in JO02CE. Activity seemed pretty low and a spent an awful lot of time tuning up and down the band, swinging the beam not hearing a lot.

Map

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Final results

 BAND   QSO DUP LOC  POINTS
----------------------------
  432    10   0   5      0
----------------------------
TOTAL    10   0   5      0
============================

Equipment:

ICOM IC-910, 10 element Yagi and Win-Test for logging.

RSGB HF CC CW

Peter — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 09:35:52 +0000

On Wednesday evening it was the RSGB HF CC (CW Leg), at first I wasn’t really planning on taking part but as the evening panned out I had nothing better to-do so armed with cider I turned the rig on and loaded up MixW and CW Skimmer and off we went for an hour and a half.. after the first 5 QSOs I got into the swing of it and started to work up the band working who-ever was strong.

I was surprised how well the half-size G5RV and the traps where doing at the end I had 41 contacts in the log! Maybe I’ll take part in these mini contests more often.

PW Contest & Backpackers Contest

Peter — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:18:02 +0000

Me operating (Taken by M3JFM)

Last weekend was the yearly 2m PW Contest which also coincides with one of the RSGB Backpackers contests (Handy!) for this contest, I did consider going out portable but considering how poor the weather was (Non stop rain) I’m pleased I decided to stay at home and just have a dabble and give some points away for an hour.

Like always I found conditions pretty poor and didn’t hear that many stations but happy with the 11 that I worked best being TM7T which was a first for me! This was using the same setup I use for sats.. just need to figure out how to get the antennas higher and also maybe consider a slightly larger 2m beam

RSGB 144MHz May Contest

Peter — Mon, 23 May 2011 21:17:33 +0000

During the weekend I decided to have a little play in the RSGB 144MHz May Contest, although from the outset limited myself to the 6 hours category which I think was a wise decision. I wasn’t expecting a huge number of QSOs after all I’m using a 5 element beam at about 10 feet which really is a bit too low and beaming south to west its all into the houses in the street with a high noise level.

Never the less had fun and enjoyed giving points away! Furthest north I worked was G5FZ/P in (IO93RH) and East would be joint between G0VHF/P and G5LK/P. What I did notice was that the antenna preformed well beaming to the east which was the main bulk of QSOs.

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Thinking for the RSGB Backpackers & PW Contest I might venture out with Dads FT817 + Sota 3el beam to somewhere high and see what I can work from there.. currently waiting for the Oxford Preservation Trust to email me back.

So final run down.

Equipment: ICOM IC-910H (50w), 5element Yagi at 10ft and Minos for logging

QSOS: 15

ARRL RTTY Roundup

Peter — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 18:06:18 +0000

This weekend I did a S&P effort in the ARRL RTTY Roundup with the aim of just having some fun, Saturday night 20m was poor only worked a couple of stations then the band faded out so spent a few hours on 40/80m before going to bed I did manage to work 2 NA stations on 40m but took a couple of trys.

On awaking Sunday somewhat later then expected I got a cup of tea and headed back in the shack and worked a good few stations on 20m and a few on 15m I did find stations found it hard to copy me on 15m so guess the 80m windom isn’t up to much on that band.

I stopped operating just after 2pm Sunday and then had a go in the RSGB AFS.

Summary:

	QSOs	DX	States	Provs
80m	7	4	0	0
40m	54	19	2	0
20m	52	16	3	0
15m	17	6	3	1
Total	130	28	5	1

Score: 130*(28+5+1) = 4420 points

Equipment

MixW
Yaesu FT-950
Antennas
- 80m Quarter Wave L
- 80m Special Windom

RSGB AFS CW

Peter — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 17:28:48 +0000

Decided to have a dabble in the RSGB AFS CW contest this afternoon, I will admit I did use MixW to take care of some of the decoding although I was picking up the odd letter!

Total QSOs: 43

Equipment: Yaesu FT950, 80m Quarter Wave Inverted L , MixW

CQWW SSB M/S at G6PZ

Peter — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 17:12:44 +0000

Its been 2 weeks since the annual CQWW SSB contest, and like last year I made the trip town to Pauls (G6PZ)’s station at Eastertown just outside Weston super-mare. I’d been looking forward to the contest for weeks and if you follow me on Twitter you’ll probably remember me going on about it an awful lot.

So Friday came and I made the my way down to the station, for once the train actually ran like clock work and I made every connection and arrived early much to the surprise of Simon (M0CLW) who was kind enough to pick me up from Weston super-mare train station, we then made the final short drive to the station.

On arrival at the station Paul had done a fantastic job at getting everything ready and very little antenna work needed done just finish guying the 160m center loaded vertical and setup Win-Test on the laptops, so we had plenty time for a chat before the contest started. Conditions over the weekend were somewhat variable at best but non the less we made the most of it and made a serious entry plus had lots of fun! everything worked great specially the 160m vertical and the 4 square for 80m, 20m didn’t seem awful great nor did 40m at times but maybe with conditions on the mend things will get back to normal.

Sorry for a bit of a poor review this year works been a bit too busy this since the contest! I’ll try better next time!

3830 Summary

Call: G6PZ
Operator(s): G6PZ 2E0CVN 2E0SQL GI0RTN M0CLW WJ6O
Station: G6PZ

Class: M/S HP
QTH: SW England
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  332    13       62
   80:  695    26      103
   40:  842    34      119
   20:  953    38      129
   15: 1491    38      138
   10:   90    21       62
------------------------------
Total: 4403   170      613  Total Score = 7,689,843

SCC RTTY Contest

Peter — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:38:49 +0000

	G	EU	Area	DX	Mult
80m	0	3	0	0	3
40m	0	17	0	3	16
20m	0	28	0	8	27
15m	0	8	0	2	8
10m	0	3	0	0	3
Total	0	59	0	13	57

Score: (0+59*2+0*2+13*3)*57 = 8949 points

Total QSOs: 72
Total Time: 2 hours
Equipment: Yaesu FT950, 80m quarter wave L, 80m Short Windom and MixW