[3830] M6T (Op : G4PIQ) WPX CW SOABHP Unassisted

[g4piq at btinternet.com]

    Callsign Used : M6T
         Operator : G4PIQ

         Category : Single Op, All Band, High Power, Unassisted

        Team/Club : Martlesham DX & CG


   BAND   Raw QSOs   Valid QSOs   Points   Prefixes
 _____________________________________________________

  160CW       12          12         24        1
   80CW      136         135        335       24
   40CW      596         585       2211      207
   20CW      930         909       1961      238
   15CW     1265        1237       3063      299
   10CW       80          79        189       29
 _____________________________________________________

 Totals     3019        2957       7783      798


    Final Score = 6210834 points.

Rig : 2 x FT1000MP +  PAs

Ants :
160m - Dipole @ 23m
80m Delta Loop @ 23m
40m - 402CD @ 25m
20/15/10 - KT34XA @ 30m + TH5 @ 24m + A3 @ 26m

It was nice to be able to organise myself to have a decent crack at a 
contest for once this year, and
anyone who knows me will be shocked to know that I was sat twiddling my 
thumbs before the start of the contest rather than frantically still 
putting the station together! A big part of the reason for this was that I 
was just planning to use the club station at work where most of the 
antennas were already in place. Thanks to Darren, G0WCW for coming along in 
the afternoon and sorting out the 160m dipole on the tower while I spliced 
a rotator cable which the lawnmower had got to; built an extra keying 
interface; fixed (I thought) an intermittent on an AMP PSU, fixed a loose 
control spindle on another amp, re-built the switching system and generally 
took the station apart and put it back together for SO2R.

Had a few odd problems during the contest, but nothing disasterous. About 
halfway through, lost the amp on the 2nd radio which I thought I'd fixed 
the afternoon before the contest, but had a spare available to drop in. I 
knew that the low band ICE filters don't have as good isolation as the K4VX 
filters we'd used previously (though the HF band ones are much better), and 
the 6dB attenuator in the FT1000MP discovered this since a LOT of 40m RF 
ends up on the 80m loop the way the antennas sit! However - a second 80m 
filter in series prevented any further problems. Building works on the site 
prevented my putting up any beverage this time which made 160m very hard 
since the transmit antenna suffers from a 20dB excess noise floor from 
something very close to the antennas. But neither it nor 80m seemed in very 
busy form, so probably not so much was lost there.

One of the main reasons for having a crack at this contest was to get a bit 
more practice at SO2R on CW. I'm getting better, but there's a long long 
way to go! I still have to force myself to use the second radio when I'm a 
bit tired, and after all the effort I was gutted to see only 143 second 
radio QSOs on the summary! I also find I'm very left ear biased - always 
use it for the telephone and I find copying stuff harder in the right ear, 
especially when there's something important going on the the left one! I 
don't think it's any less sensitive, just habit - will have to spend the 
next few months using my right ear for the telephone!  I really want to 
support the view that there is absolutely no need for a seperate category 
for 2 radio operation since it's far more about skill than it is about 
equipment - this is really hard to do well - at least I think so!

Conditions seemed excellent on 15m to JA in particular, although I found 
the US more difficult to run than I had expected - was I weak; in QRM; or 
was it just the summertime. In general I suffered from not being as familar 
with summertime propagation as I should have been, and in particular with 
how things are changing as we go up the cycle. 40m produced some good W 
runs, though oddly enough, not as good as in the SSB leg. 80 and 10 were 
quite disappointing. On 80, it just didn't seem to run well to W, but maybe 
I didn't try hard enough at the right times - the good 20/15 conditions 
tended to make me spend more time there and then go to 40 later where there 
was good 6 point rate to be had. 10 was just plain disappointing. I spent 
almost no time running on 10 - ran a few Ws, but with all the guys North of 
4 land being on scatter over South/Central America.

As usual, any feedback on how the signal stacked up would be interesting. 
Thanks to everyone for the points. Look for you all in IOTA which is 
probably the next time I'll get a chance to give a major HF contest a 
decent bash - we'll be multi op for that I expect.

73,

Andy, G4PIQ
g4piq at btinternet.com


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