M6T WW CW SOAB Assisted - Long...

[Andy Cook]

CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST  1996
                             
                          ***RAW SCORES***


      Call: M6T (op : G4PIQ)         Country:  England
      Mode: CW                       Category: Single Unlimited

      BAND     QSO   QSO PTS  PTS/QSO   ZONES COUNTRIES


      160       96      113     1.18      8      45
       80      724     1124     1.55     21      79
       40      427      744     1.74     31     104
       20      842     1861     2.21     34     104
       15      525     1179     2.25     25      97
       10       25       41     1.64      7      20
     ---------------------------------------------------

     Totals   2639     5062     1.92    126     449  =>  2,910,650

Equipment : 2 x FT1000D + Amplifiers

Antennas : 2 x TH5 @ 75 ft, 402CD @ 75ft, A3 @ 85ft, 80m Delta Loop @
70ft, 160m Inv-V @ 65ft.

Comments
Well - what can I say! This was not the same M6T as was on for the SSB
leg! Since our M6T SSB multi-multi effort is field-day style and we are
unable to leave the antennas up, it is just too much to contemplate
doing it all again a month later for the CW leg. Besides - several of
the operators are like me - phone ops, who can do a bit of CW, so that
would make it all a bit more difficult as well. However, this particular
unashamed phone op decided some while back that he needed to get this CW
and two radio stuff sorted out, and Id planned to do some form of CQWW
CW for a couple of years now, but until now, the plans had always fallen
foul of other commitments. 

This year it was a promising sign that, even a couple of weeks after the
SSB leg, I still felt like I wanted to do the CW leg - the euphoria left
after the SSB event had worn off, I could see the pain involved in doing
the CW event on the horizon, and I still felt keen - this was good! It
wasnt until the week immediately before the contest that the enthusiasm
low hit as I was loaded up with a stack of panic activities at work
which entailed traveling and long late nights. At this point I had a
couple of lucky breaks - I was able to schedule time and people so that
I could take the Friday before the contest off, and Darren, G0WCW
offered to put the extra TH5 up on its mobile tower. If it hadnt been
for him helping here and there, this wouldnt all have happened! Most of
the other antennas were already there - I was using G4MRS - our work
club station - I just wanted to put the delta loop up for 80m as a
replacement for the dipole which was there, straighten out a skewed
reflector on the A3, and Id hoped to get the 160m antenna up another
25ft, but this didnt happen!

Unfortunately, the traveling before the event meant that I wasnt able
to build some of the little extra bits and pieces which make multi-band
contesting that bit more effective. Things like automatic antenna
switching between bands, and - more importantly - automatically
switching bandpass filters. In the end, changing bands on both the
radios at once made for 18 PL259 connects or disconnects and 12 control
adjustments each time - a little sub-optimal - but I did manage to do it
right through the contest without blowing anything up!

Id actually hoped to complete at least one automatic switching bandpass
filter on the Friday evening - I had all the bits and I had wound all
the inductors - but in the end I was still putting the basic station
together 5 minutes into the contest!

As the contest started I was on 40m and worked a few there, but it never
really seemed to go. I was also feeling the effects of a busy week with
not a whole lot of sleep, and was really wondering why I was going to
sit in this hut for the next 48 hours. Going down to 80 brought the rate
up a lot, and I found it easy to run there with a useful number of 3
pointers thrown in. I was also able to start to use the second radio to
grab some mults off 40m just pulling the spots off packet and not
letting it break the 80m run. All in all, this helped to stave off the
tiredness. 

About 0455 I went to 160 to take a look there and found the first big
problem of the weekend - I seemed to be deaf as a post. Id suspected a
problem from the site before, but this confirmed I guess about a 15 - 20
dB excess noise floor. The station is located on a 4000 person
telecommunications development centre, and you can imagine the number of
computers and bits of transmission kit around! Checking after the
contest shows the noise drops off rapidly a few hundred kHz above the
top of the band - weve got a bit of detective work to do here! The
result of the noise was that most of the Caribbean mults spotted werent
audible to me on that first night, and I couldnt run at any great rate
cos I couldnt hear half the stuff coming back to me, So - please - if
you called me, and then called me a deaf git - please accept my
apologies! I did try and stay off 160m for much of the contest after
this because I just didnt know who I was QRMing when calling CQ.

After this I went back to 80, then to in quite quick succession to 40
and 20. The result of the first night was very few QSOs on 40m - bad
news, and a problem that would stay with me throughout the contest. The
daytime was pretty much as expected - running on 20 and 15 as best I
could, though I can see that I made a stack of errors about when best to
move bands. I also wasted quite some time with the 2nd radio struggling
to crack pile-ups - it took me an hour or so to realize that, although I
knew the A3 was pointed at 90 degrees to the 402CD on the same tower and
rotator - I had to subtract 90 degrees and not add it - stick a 2nd
pointer on next time! By my standards, the US run on 20 on Saturday was
pretty good, and by the end of it the lack of sleep was catching up on
me. Id had a couple of 10 minute breaks up till that point - the toilet
was 3 minutes walk away! - but now I needed a little longer and went for
a wander outside in the sleety rain in my T-shirt - when its just a
couple of degrees above freezing - that sure does wake you up! The rest
of the evening was all a bit mediocre - no great rates, and hopping
about from band to band. 

A bit after midnight I realized that I was really shattered and was just
not being effective - I was spending too much time in pile-ups because
it was easy - so I took another walk in the rain and came back to it for
another couple of hours. However - sleep seemed to be the only good
option at this point so I turned all the fan laden gear off, got the
sleeping bag and air-bed out and went to sleep on the shack floor. Id
set the alarm clock for 2 hours time, but I woke with after 90 minutes
or so - I looked out the window and thought I saw it getting light which
caused me to fly out of my bag assuming that Id overslept. In reality
it was just reflected light from the site lights on the low clouds which
were throwing down a foul cold rain outside. I went for a quick wash and
made a sandwich for breakfast and then sat down for the morning session
- 2.5 hours more off time gone. Again I spent too much time on 80 -
those slow difficult band changes just didnt encourage me to try 40
when I was tired, and 160 was sooooooo noisy! As dawn came I found that
I could just hear KP2A and J39A in the noise on 160 and spent far too
long trying to crack the pile-ups on 160 without continuing to run on
80. For me it required just too much concentration to copy the Caribbean
signals in my noise floor and continue to run on another band. 

The Sunday brought better conditions on the higher bands that Saturday,
but I wasnt at my best to take advantage of them. I struggled to use
the second radio which required much more concentration that it should
have needed, and there were times I really wasnt sure what planet I was
on. I was often convinced I was at home rather than in the shack at work
and got a real shock when I looked out of the window, and during the US
run on Sunday I was convinced that all these people worked for me - just
like dreaming whilst awake! Is this particular dream a sign of
megalomania? There were times here where I completely lost the plot on
being able to copy CW as well - so, if I struggled with you - my
apologies! It was great to see 10m open a bit more on the Sunday - again
- the slow and difficult band changes meant that I didnt manage to take
anywhere near full advantage of it.

The end of the contest brought a belated attempt to recover some ground
on 40m, but the rate was far from marvelous. It was really only towards
the end of the contest that I started to use the second radio properly
and to tune with it looking for mults while I was calling CQ. Up till
then Id been using packet as a crutch to make working mults easier for
me - what it should be is a useful adjunct - I guess this comes from too
many years of multi-multi where the run stations job is to run as fast
as possible and smash through the mult pile-ups as quickly as possible,
and its the spotting guys job to find you the mults! 

The overall result was disappointing, but I learnt a hell of a lot -
its pretty embarrassing being beaten by the unassisted guys! However -
on the excuse front - its probably 5 years since I have done a major
international contest multi-band, and things are very different at the
bottom of the cycle to the top. Quick band changes are key - this should
be easy to sort. Make sure you arent completely trashed before the
start of the contest - again - with advance planning - not impossible.
Using two radios for CW needs a lot more work on my part - this is just
going to take practice - next year I plan to do a few less VHF contests
(my normal haunt from home) and a few more HF CW ones. 

This is good - Ive found something where theres a huge scope for
improvement! Contesting is never dull! Roll on 1997!

Andy Cook, G4PIQ
g4piq at blacksheep.org

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