Hi all,
Plans to enter this year were looking decidedly dodgy, as the XYL had
invited her brother to come over and stay with us for the weekend, plus it
was my birthday on the Sunday.
A meal out was planned for Saturday evening, plus a big family meal on the
Sunday.
However, I did manage to get up earlier than the rest of the house and sneak
into the shack to grab a few hours before anyone realised I was missing.
When they saw my enthusiasm, I was left to play for a good portion of the
day, apart from the usual shopping trip, until it was time to go out for the
meal.
On Sunday, I got up early-ish, and managed to put a good few in the log
before anyone else stirred, so that helped. It was also decided that the
Sunday meal would be an evening affair, so that left me most of the day to
play.
I also had two aims for the contest.
One was to increase my tally for the CQ Marathon while to higher bands were
so well open.
The other was down to the fact that Clublog supports a challenge for working
15m and above (in terms of countries worked) for the month of September, so
this was a good chance to boost my score in that.
This also meant me spending limited time on 40/20m, and making the most of
15/10m.
As it happens, 80m was really poor when I listened, with only a few weak EU
stations about.
Conditions were good for the weekend, but when you consider that the SFI was
way over 200 at the top of the last cycle, this weekends' 136 seems quite
poor by comparison.
Despite that, both days were different, in that some stations were weak one
day, but stronger on the other. I couldn't say that Saturday was better or
worse than Sunday, as both days offered propagation to different places. On
Saturday, I could barely hear KG6DX, but on Sunday, he was booking in.
Conversely, W7's in Arizona were pounding in on Saturday, but were much
weaker on Sunday.
I had a few highlights to my weekend:
Three new band-slots: UK7AZ and VP2V/AA7V on 10m, and TG9AJR on 15m.
I managed to find NY2GB on 10m to give N2FF's granddaughter a (hopefully!)
new country.
Working K6TA (CA) on 40m at 0721UTC (an hour past sunrise here).
At 1730UTC on Sunday, I broke for the big family meal, thinking that my
contest time was up.
However, I managed to sneak back for an extra 50 minutes at 1900UTC, and
bagged more mults one after another: 9M2CNC, ZP5TNT, HK3JJB, 8P2K,
PJ2/VE7SZ, and UA2K (Kaliningrad).
Lowlights: Well, there are a few!
For some as yet undetected reason, when my beam was pointing at 120 degrees,
I had to reduce power on 15m only to less than 70 watts. If power crept up
to 70 watts, my UPS started howling, and wanting to shut Windows down. Why
only that heading on that band, I can't yet figure. It hasn't happened
before, so that only adds to the confusion.
I had a few sessions calling CQ, and so many times, I had stations calling
over a QSO in progress to get noticed. This slowed down the exchange,
resulting in me losing a few contacts.
I'm sure it happens everywhere to all of us, but I seemed to be plagued this
weekend.
Apart from once, it was all UT stations. The exception was an OH station,
who kept calling, even when I asked him to QRX. When I finally went back to
him, just to get him out of the way, he didn't reply.
Then, just as I start another exchange, he calls again (and again, and
again).
On at least one occasion, I must have been spotted, and this meant folk who
couldn't really hear me decided that they would try anyway. That also slowed
me down, but it was also welcomed, in that I did get some good runs for a
while.
So, here is my claimed score:
QSOs Points Zones DX: States
80m: 0
40m: 90 212 8 36 17
20m: 80 192 13 45 14
15m: 201 511 23 58 40
10m: 180 493 23 53 39
Total: 551 1408 67 192 110
Multipliers 369
Score 519552
Power: less than 100 watts but mostly 80 watts out
Antennas: 2-ele mini-beam for 20/15/10, wires for 40m
Writelog 11.06A with MMTTY
microHam MKII
IC7800
Thanks to all for the fun and enjoyment, and see you in the next one!
Very best 73
Phil GU0SUP
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