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.

Equipment: Yaesu FT-950, Heil Headset, Signalink (DVK) and a 80m Special Windom

 BAND   QSO  CQ DXC DUP  POINTS   AVG

--------------------------------------

  160     0   0   0   0       0  0.00

   80     9   1   7   0       9  1.00

   40    21   2  14   0      21  1.00

   20    55   8  20   0      65  1.18

   15    16   4  10   0      26  1.63

   10     0   0   0   0       0  0.00

--------------------------------------

TOTAL   101  15  51   0     121  1.20

======================================

         TOTAL SCORE : 7 986

The station was setup Friday afternoon between the odd heavy rain shower which only lasted a couple of minutes at best, so we managed to get the tents and the beam up ready to finish off Saturday morning when we all congregated to finish off setting up the station which was a Yaesu FT-2000, Quadra, and dunstar filters to make spotting using a AOR receiver possible. The antennas were A4S, dipoles for 40/80m and a vertical for the spotting station.

Conditions did seem rather poor for obvious reasons, but when I had my turns I managed to get some decent runs on 20m Saturday afternoon and also on 40/80m during late evening, it did get hard during the early hours of the morning on 80/40m only picking up the odd contact and running seemed a constant task of hitting F1 on the keyboard.

The best part was probably the last 20mins when there was a brilliant opening towards JA which gave us some much needed mults! Overall had a fantastic weekend although I was pleased to get home Sunday for a good nights sleep!

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

After sending a CQ call out I had a nice stream of stations working into

• Germany
• France
• Austria
• Romania

Once this dried up I moved back to 20m PSK31 and worked into

• Poland
• Germany
• Ukraine
• Croatia – EU170

Then just as I was shutting things down for the night I worked into European Russia R45 the guy was booming 59+40. Bring on tomorrow and what conditions bring .