CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB
Call: GM5A
Operator(s): W0GJ, GM3YOR, GM4AFF, GM4FDM, GM0CLN, GM0HZI, GM0NAI, GM0RLZ,
GM0TTY, MM0BSM, MM0CCC, MM3GVE
Station: GM6NX
Class: M/M HP
QTH: STIRLING, SCOTLAND
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 739 10 60
80: 795 10 65
40: 1719 29 110
20: 2316 37 138
15: 2152 38 143
10: 894 32 140
------------------------------
Total: 8615 161 656 Total Score = 12,747,651
Club:
Comments:
After a catalogue of disasters in the weeks leading up to the contest it was a
miracle that we were ready at all for the start. Two broken rotators, a 4ele
20m monobander which decided it would try to tunnel to Australia, nose first
(ouch), and total mains power failure on the site one week prior to the event
were just the highlights of an illustrious list! Another working (well
Almost!) rotator was eventually installed on the Thursday before the start, a 2
element quad replaced the 4 ele monobander and we eventually had mains power
returned two days before the contest!
A huge vote of thanks is due to those who helped rectify the problems but in
particular to Stu MM0BSM, Colin GM0RLZ and Neil GM0HZI who worked wonders and
put in some very long hours to sort it all out.
As for the contest... sadly we added to our list of problems when we Encountered
MAJOR problems on the first night with our 80m station. Suffices to say that
in the first 12 hours we only had 81 QSOs on that band, causing several sense of
humour bypasses amongst the team, and one set of welded relay contacts in an
amp! As a cure (but not a great one) we erected a sloping Dipole and installed
a standby amplifier on Saturday. This was used until the end. In addition
the computer network was not at all stable and had to be regularly re-booted in
order to keep the data flowing between stations. Plenty of work to do before
CQWW CW then!
Now that all the bad bits are out of the way I must say that we thoroughly
enjoyed ourselves. We had great team spirit and a big enough team to ensure
that everyone managed to sleep for a while. We were also pleased to welcome
Glenn Johnson W0GJ who joined us from Minnesota for the weekend. Glenn was a
welcome addition to team and we would all like to thank him for his help. It
was pleasing to see that, after all his work running amateur radio exams and
setting up a ham club in Bhutan, Glenn was on the mic for our only two QSOs with
that country.
Conditions on the bands were, as stated by many before us, great for this point
in the solar cycle. We had set a target of 10 million points before the contest
and easily managed to surpass it. I'll let the band breakdown explain the
rest.
Finally some thanks. First of all to Stirling & District ARS (www.gm6nx.com)
for hosting the GMDX Group (www.gmdx.org.uk) CQWW Contest entries this year,
secondly to all who helped get GM5A on the air in time and lastly to all of you
for the QSOs. They are very much appreciated.
Please look for GM5A again in CQWW CW.
Regards
Colin Smith (GM0CLN)
On Behalf Of The GMDX Group Contest Team
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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