[3830] CQWW CW M6W(G3WW) SOSB(A)/40 LP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: M6W
Operator(s): G3WW
Station: G4EHT

Class: SOSB(A)/40 LP
QTH: IO92cq
Operating Time (hrs): 39:32

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:                    
   80:                    
   40: 1306    31      110
   20:                    
   15:                    
   10:                    
------------------------------
Total: 1306    31      110  Total Score = 289,473

Club: Chiltern DX Club

Comments:

"Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth", Mike
Tyson.

Well CQWW CW 2015 certainly felt like that at times.

The first indication of a problematic weekend happened before the contest
began.
A straightforward 100 mile journey to my father's (G4EHT) QTH in Lichfield was
a
night mare. Usually it's a 2 hr trip, so I left for G4EHT's place at 8pm
local,
intending to arrive around 10pm, set up my station over the next 2 hours to
start at midnight local when the contest begins.

But things happened beyond my control. First the M1 motorway (interstate)
was closed for around 40 minutes due to an accident between a truck and a car.
The SatNav advised I would still make it with time to spare. Then 5 mile from
Lichfield a second road accident took place involving two cars which happened
just seconds ahead of me. Once again the road was closed, this time for over an
hour. Police, fire and ambulance all turned up to cut bodies from the mangled
wreckage. Mercifully I was not involved and so I finally arrived at G4EHT's 4
hours after setting off, ironically exactly at midnight.

Anyway, after hurriedly setting up the FT-1000MP and PC, I made my first QSO at
0025 UTC and I set off after my target of Olof's (M5E) English SA 40M LP record
of 286K points. My aim was a little more of course, around 300K points to
account for errors after log checking.

2 hours into the contest and the PC crashed with the 'blue screen of death' and
in haste to leave earlier I hadn't packed my spare laptop so by 0230 UTC I
really thought it was curtains. A reboot into safe-mode and then a another
restart and the PC was alive once more so I plodded on but expected more PC
trouble.

At around 0300 UTC I noticed the PC clock was incorrect, the date was
01-01-2007.
I stopped to correct that and in doing so my rate tracking window really got
screwed! When I finally got it sorted by 0400 UTC I was amazingly level with
the English record which suggested conditions were good and/or my strategy was
coming together.

Conditions really did seem excellent on day 1 with lots of multipliers worked
and by 2000 UTC Saturday I hit DXCC and after 24 hours I was amazingly 65,000
points ahead of M5E's record. Things were finally looking promising.

But Sunday proved to be a different matter. I just couldn't find many workable
stations or new multipliers. For over 12 hours between 0800 UTC and 2100 UTC I
hadn't worked a single new multiplier and that hurt the score.

Sunday evening was awful. The bandmap was full of JA's and other far east
stations that I could barely hear, let alone work. And the usually reliable
UA9's were like gold dust.

Hour after hour throughout Sunday afternoon my 65,000 point lead was eroded
away until 2 hours from the finish I was then behind my target. CQ-ing was
largely fruitless, perhaps I'd been too efficient and worked everything on day
1?

A frantic push for W's right at the end and cracking 6V7A and Olof as 3B9HA
pileup saw the final score reach 289K which is just over the record but will
easily fall short after checking.

Nevertheless, despite all the hiccups along the way I still had fantastic fun
once in the chair and it was a real challenge to say the least. The antenna was
very simple, a fixed dipole with apex at 8m so can't expect miracles. It was
orientated to favour NA and southern EU. Despite the low height the dipole did
slightly favour the USA and was shockingly bad off the ends towards Japan,
Scandinavia and SA which one would expect. It also helps explain why I was
missing so many Asian stations and mults.

FT-1000MP
40m low dipole
Win-Test 4.20 dev

Many thanks to my host G4EHT and my wife & children for letting me have the
weekend to contest.

See you in WPX CW 2016, hopefully!


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