[3830] CQWW CW G4PIQ SOAB(A) LP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: G4PIQ
Operator(s): G4PIQ
Station: G4PIQ

Class: SOAB(A) LP
QTH: JO02od
Operating Time (hrs): 44
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  144     9       52
   80:  415    17       82
   40:  509    29      101
   20:  457    33      102
   15:  652    35      113
   10:  509    35      124
------------------------------
Total: 2686   158      574  Total Score = 4,143,120

Club: 

Comments:

Rig : K3 + K2

160m : Inv-V @ 18m

80m : Delta Loop @ 16m

40m : Inv-V @ 18m

HF : 4 element tri-bander on 6m boom @ 17m

 

So - this year's contest was another one of those 'working right up to the
wire' events. 

 

I have some space here at home, but, in the 5 years that we have been living
here, have had no time to get anything other than wire antennas in a tree up to
try the place out. I therefore decided that I would operate from home for CQWW
CW.

 

With a tower still lying unused on the ground, I planned to put up a 17m tall
scaffold pole mast with an old TET 4 element tri-bander on top which had layen
unused for 20 years which I would not be overly upset if I dropped (it came
with that tower which is lying on the ground...). I'm not overly experienced at
putting up these masts - I like towers! But I have seen real experts do it
(teams who can do a 4 stack of yagis on 2m in an hour). So putting a big load
up on one of these brought some trepidation - but - nothing ventured....

 

Everything taking longer to completely fix than we ever hope meant that - at
2.30 Friday afternoon - I was finally ready to raise the mast wiht the antenna
attached. However - the added weight of the antenna meant that the wheels just
spun on the garden tractor which was acting to pull down the falling derrick. A
quick trip out to a ship's chandlers in Ipswich to grab some (clearly high
quality) pulley blocks - and get surgery on my wallet - meant that the antenna
finally got up in the air with about 30 mins of daylight remaining...

 

The rest of the evening involved sorting the rotator (100m of 1.5mm Twin and
Earth is clearly a bit marginal to handle the brake of a Ham-III rotator and I
needed to remove some convenient tails to get into the house and have it work
OK), putting up an 80m delta loop under the yagi, running feeders, fixing the
160m dipole, putting the station together and making my sandwiches! I was ready
25 minutes before the off. However - I was shattered. I'd had a tough few months
at work - I'd done (for a lazy deskbound me) a lot of physical work in the past
few days. I considered missing the first couple of hours of the contest because
with LP pile-ups would be hard to break - but 40 sounded in great shape and I
wanted the 3 pointers, so I kicked off - a bit carefully at just after 0000.

 

Looking at the log - there are long periods where I just didn't make any real
use of the 2nd radio - for me - this is a classic sign of being tired. I had to
re-learn that with a yagi - you have a decent chance of working those
backscatter Eu multipliers on the HF bands. I even found that - in spite of
100W and over 2dB feeder loss - I didn't feel that weak - I could break
un-expected pile-ups much more easily than expected. 

Wasn't convinced that my LF antennas were working as well as last year. The 40m
and 160m dipoles shared the same feeder which limited flexibility and there was
definitely something odd there which implied that there may have been a problem
with the 'cold' side of the 160m dipole at the top - but I judged the risk of
not getting it back up in the tree without everything getting seriously tangled
to be too high to take.

 

I said I was tired. I was falling asleep on night 1 - not a good sign - I took
out 30 mins at about midday to get a shower - and that helped. I took 2 hours
sleep (but was off for nearly 3 hours) on Sunday morning between 0200 &
0400. I felt good after coming back from that. 44 hours was pretty easy. 

 

I STILL have the startegy for this low power Assisted CW stuff all wrong. I
like to run - but I probably need to spend more time using ALL the data I have
available and just hoover up all the many spotted stations. It's not a mode of
operation I find very interesting - but it's probably the right answer. I
couldn't run hard enough for long periods with LP to make running a more
effective strategy I think.

 

So - thak you all for the fun, QSOs, mults and competition over the weekend

73

Andy, G4PIQ


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