Hi all,
Well, that was different!
I almost got motivated enough to start the contest from the beginning, but
in the, 2 weeks of flu like symptoms caught up with me, and I decided to go
to bed, and then start from around 1200UTC, as I had several household jobs
that needed doing, and this seemed the best way to play it.
I obviously made the right decision, as we had a tremendous thunderstorm
during the early hours of Saturday morning, from about 0300 till about 0530,
so I would have gone QRT anyway.
Once I got going, things seemed OK for a while, but then I noticed that
conditions were in and out, and I had to grab whatever I could as soon as I
saw it. There was a nice opening to JA during our afternoon of the first
day, and I bagged a few mults, but was still lacking the W/VE mults that one
normally expects.
At some point during the afternoon, the main UK node of our cluster decided
to stop playing, so the rest of the contest had to be done without any
support from that.
>From about 2100UTC, the bands were dying, and it was hard to get heard, and
as I had planned to get up early on the Sunday morning, I decided to quit
while the bands weren't playing and catch some sleep.
I was hoping to catch some W's on 40m, but I was far too late, as the band
must have closed much earlier than usual. Not one signal was audible here on
40, and 20 wasn't much better to start with.
Around 0600, things improved on 20, and I bagged HR1RMG, which was nice, and
failed to make it with TI4DJ, so I went calling CQ. Shortly after I started,
TI4DJ called me, which was great!
It was also nice to find Mike KH6ND on 20 - a great signal from KH6.
10m was open sporadically, and I kept taking a listen, and working whatever
I could. Most were SA stations, so were worth plenty of points to me!
I managed to beat last years' score with less Q's which I thought was odd,
but then I remembered that last year, we all complained that it was a WAE
type contest!
Who else saw some poor so-and-so calling CQ WPX? And just how many were
sending 599-001-001? Or was it just me attracting them? I also saw several
stations that had clocks that were 1 or 2 hours ahead of UTC!
Anyway, here is my effort..........
QSOs Points DX: Call Areas
80m: 0 0 0 0
40m: 20 76 12 0
20m: 200 1528 46 17
15m: 75 799 28 4
10m: 10 139 8 0
Total: 305 2542
Continents: 6
Total multipliers: 115
VK bonus points: 100
Score: 1754080
Station Description: IC756 + 60 watts
Antenna(s): Mini-beam + wire for 40m
Operators: GU0SUP
And just FYI, here is my band breakdown:
40m Summary
Countries
9A DL F I OH OK SM SP UA9
UN UR YL
Call Areas NONE!
20m Summary
Countries
4X 5B 9A CN CT DL EA ER ES EU
F G GM GU HA HB HR I KH6 LA
LU LY LZ OH OK OM OZ PA PY S5
SM SP SV SV9 T9 TI UA UA9 UN UR
VR YB YL YO YU YV ZC4
Call Areas
K0 K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 K6 K7 K9
VK2
VE1 VE3
JA2 JA3 JA5 JA6 JA7
15m Summary
Countries
4X 5B 9A A4 CN DL EA HB I
LU OE OK OM OZ PY S5 SM SP T9
UA UA9 UN YB YL YO YU YV ZC4
Call Areas
K1 K4 K5
VE1
10m Summary
Countries
CX I LU OK PY T9 UA YU
Call Areas NONE!
Very best 73 to all,
Phil GU0SUP
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