Hi all,
Well, that was jolly hard work! What happened to the propagation??
I decided to have a lay-in on the Saturday morning, and then see how it went
through that night. I'm very glad I didn't get up at some silly hour of the
day, as when I got into the shack at about 0845UTC, the bands were very
quiet, and it was hard work to find folk to work after the first half-hour.
It didn't seem to improve through the day either, so I had tea and watched a
bit of telly, then went back to the shack about 2100, only to find that 20m
was nicely open to the USA. Sadly, 40m was far too noisy for me, so it was
back to 20m.
Worked some nice mults, then called it a day, and got an early start on the
Sunday at 0555UTC.
The bands were better, but still not as good as they have been, although I
guess this is what we have to look forward to now! Anyone who chose to do a
10m single band entry must have been very disappointed!
It was great to see DP1POL in the contest, and a pity you can't claim for 7
continents!
There were some awful signals about, some with very bad spurs, and I had to
move from my frequency on a couple of occasions after one particular station
called me, then moved up just a bit to call CQ himself.
Also suffered QRM from MFSK stations on more than one occasion, and I just
can't believe they are unable to hear RTTY signals!
40m was full of "jammers" too! Why do they start sending strings of V's if
you so much as go anywhere near the CW end? And one or two were "policing"
the SSB side too!
I recently bought an MQ1 mini-beam, and this was my first contest with it.
It certainly helped a lot, and made quite a difference to some signals. I
worked YE1D with it quite easily, whereas on the good old G5RV, he was
inaudible.
On 20m, it wasn't so noticeable, but it did help at times.
I also noted some very skewed paths! During the last evening of the contest,
I worked a CT3 station, but I could only hear him if I beamed due west!
Turning the beam at him made him disappear!
I picked up a few new band countries though, so I was happy enough with
that! There was BX4AF on 10m, 4K6DI on 40m, and OM5JA on 80m.............
Thanks guys!
So, here is my very meagre score:
QSOs DX: Call Areas
80m: 6 5 0
40m: 27 18 1
20m: 141 42 13
15m: 129 32 13
10m: 47 16 10
Total: 350
Continents: 6
Total multipliers: 150
Score: 315000
Writelog 10.39C + MMTTY v1.62
Station Description: Icom IC756 running about 60 watts
Antenna(s): MQ1 mini-beam + half-size G5RV
Operators: Me!
Thanks to all contacts, and if anyone wants/needs a QSL card from me, drop
me an email, and I will sort it.
Very best 73 de Phil GU0SUP
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