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!

I then took an hour out and had an interesting chat with Eric K3NA (more on that soon maybe), and finalised my short talk about DXAnywere for the Ham 2.0 session. it also allowed me to stock up on mugs of hot chocolate!

The next set of lectures was a double stream by Dom (M0BLF) on Ham 2.0 – sharing amateur radio information across the Internet. which gave an in sight to Web 2.0 and what it can offer amateur radio he also put in a couple of short presentations by Michael G7VJR on Club Log which is a tool for producing DXCC league tables, log search services and most-wanted lists for ham radio clubs and societies.

I then followed up with a short presentation about DXAnywhere which is a Social Media engine to provide features which include cluster notification, social networking and mini applications.

After this we returned to the bar for a short period to grab some lunch and a drink before getting ready for the afternoon lecture by John Gould G3WKL on Update on Countering Deliberate QRM, to finish up the weekend there was the final farewell from the RSGB President and the Raffle Draw. It was good to see it wasn’t fixed when Janet (2E0LLM) got called out (Well done Janet!!).

Which finally concluded a fantastic weekend yet again and very much looking forward to next year, was also nice to see a slightly larger turn out of young people!

First up was Lee (G0MTN) who started with the Joys of Contesting, covering why people contest and the types of contests which you can actually take part in, which we all know can vary by large amounts, for beginners it gave a good insight to what they might like to try first while they get interested.

Next up after a coffee break which at this venue was free and you could have as much tea, coffee, hot chocolate (my preference) as you like! so you could be nicely topped up throughout the day, was contest operating procedures by Roger (G3SWX) covering what to expect when operating and how to actually handle yourself on the air like not giving your callsign 10 times, he also covered operating as SO2R and that if you lose your run frequency because you QSY’d to the other radio you can’t expect to have it back.

At the end of this session I decided to take some time out, and prop up the bar for a while and socialise you could also check your email, twitter etc as there was free wifi covering the whole venue! after some lunch I returned back to the lectures Propagation by Steve G0KYA was insightful even though I’ve been licensed since 2002 I’m no expert at this subject he covered the basics of solar physics, explaining things like A and K indexes explaining that the geomagentic field A index is an average over 24 hours were as the K index shows a three hourly effect.

Steve then went on to explain what needs to be considered

• Solar Flux
• Geomagentic Disturbances
• Direction signals travel
• Time of day and year
• East west/North south polar
• Bands
• Path (long, short, hops)
• Working mults (important in some contests)

He also covered some of propagation prediction programs like W6EL Prop, VOA Cap and ACE HF explaining they use different algorithms and will normally display different results! but do offer a good guide on what to expect and can help plan what bands your going to use during the contest and when you should expect to work JA, USA etc.

Next session was on Antennas for contesting by Steve G3UFY, who covered antennas which UK gardens can cope like verticals and dipoles explaining what you should expect out of them. He also covered some of the larger antennas which most people dream of like large quads and beams! After this followed a 30minute break before going back to Contest Strategy by Dave (G4BUO).

Who covered what you should do before contest like sorting antennas and sleeping arrangements and food so you have a clear idea of what your going to be doing, he also covered during the contest giving tips like don’t check email, surf the web or even watch the telly! as this means your not 100% focused at the task at hand. Dave also covered post-contest like remembering to send your logs and make sure you correct your log so that its error free! He also said that’s it worth noting down some notes about the contest to help with next years (I do this with my blog!)

The final lecture I attended was Station Equipment & Layout by Paul (G6PZ) who has his on super station, Paul covered how you should layout your shack so that’s its ergonomically correct and comfortable like placing the monitor at eye height and the keyboard and mouse in front of it so you don’t have to stretch around to find them. He also went on to talking about what equipment you need for SO1R, SO2R and M/* style contest efforts and things you should make sure you have more so in a M/* style event so you don’t suffer from any problems.

At the end of the Contest Uni stream if you had attended more than 4 lectures you got issued a certificate to prove the fact which was a nice touch and gave you something to put on the shack wall.

The evening was taken up with socialising and the dinner, afterwards us youngsters hanged out in the bar drinking beer in till the small hours.

After little bit of rest I decided that I wanted to have at least a couple of qsos in the contest so I set aside an hour 5-6pm, it started off rather slow but soon started to pick up working stations on 15m which is normally dead contests always seem to make their own propagation, then picked up a few stations on 10m then it was onto 20m where I worked the most after this it was a matter of working the odd qso on 40m and 80m.

All in all I was pleased I got something in the log but nothing like previous years!

Contest         : IARU HF World Championships
Callsign        : M3PHP
Mode            : PHONE
Category        : Single Operator (SO)
Band(s)         : All bands (AB)
Class           : Low Power (LP)
Zone/State/...  : 27
Operating time  : 1h15

 BAND   QSO DUP ITU  HQ  POINTS   AVG
--------------------------------------
  160     0   0   0   0       0  0.00
   80     1   0   0   1       1  1.00
   40     6   0   0   6       6  1.00
   20    24   0   5  12      50  2.08
   15     9   0   3   4      21  2.33
   10     4   0   2   1       8  2.00
--------------------------------------
TOTAL    44   0  10  24      86  1.95
======================================
         TOTAL SCORE : 2 924