The first leg was CW, I will admit I know very little CW, I can make out my callsign and 59 but that really is my limit so I setup MixW and CW Skimmer to act as my ears, which like normal worked perfectly. After 5 QSOs, I got into the flow of things and started working my way up the CW portion of the band, within two hours I managed to work 58 QSOs. Conditions seemed reasonable and every station I called came back.

The QSO amount was also an improvement over 2011 where I’d worked 43 stations using a 80m Quarter Wave Inverted L so least I managed to increase the total for this year slightly.

This weekend saw the SSB leg of the contest, at dead on 14:00 I worked Rob (M0VFC) operating G3PYE and then started to work my way back down the band. Which worked well slowly getting more contacts in the log, there was the usual QRM from stations splattering each other but even so there was only two stations who I didn’t manage to work, this might be due to conditions, QRM or my antenna not being that great even so the half size G5RV with 80m traps worked well.

I wasn’t worried after two hours S&P, I’d put 60 QSOs in the logbook and called it a day. What I did learn was that I needed to sort out keying the FT950’s DVK within Win-Test so I’ll be sorting some LUA scripts out in due course as it will be handy for other contests as well.

Overall very enjoyable two weekends, now need to look at what other contests I want to take part in this year.

Call: G6PZ
Operator(s): 2E0SQL, G6PZ, GI0RTN, IZ1LBG, M0CLW, M0DXR
Station: G6PZ

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

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  189    13       66
   80:  650    24       91
   40: 1035    34      120
   20:  914    40      144
   15: 1917    39      150
   10: 2296    40      155
------------------------------
Total: 7001   150      726  Total Score = 15,773,520

Club: Chiltern DX Club

Full write up can be found at http://lists.contesting.com/_3830/2011-11/msg00035.html

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.

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.

View Larger Map

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

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

You can see the results at http://www.rsgbcc.org/hf/results/2010/ssbfd2010.shtml

We found conditions very hard going on the the higher bands 20/15/10m but also due to spending time calling CQ lost some most needed QSOs on the low bands.

Maybe 2010 can improve this.

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.

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!

So I was at least pleased to get two QSOs but I wont be winning any awards for this one.