TopBand: GJ2D report

[Manyoaks]

Well, we did it!  And hope we gave a few of you a new one on 160m or at
least a juicey mult for the contest.

We ran late setting up and had a few problems with the inv L when the
fibreglass top section broke.  Winds were gusting Force 5 - 7 on the Friday
of the contest - not ideal antenna weather.

Jersey is quiet but the 1100 ft NA beverage was magic even so.  As expected
the L and the V were noisey during darkness hours but switching to the bevs
just made sigs jump right out.

USA was strongest Saturday morning and Caribbean strongest Sunday morning.

VE1ZZ thundered in 6 mins into the contest and K1UO was bagged 39 mins in.
PT7BZ was an unusual time of 01:17, we would have expected that to be later
on.  KD9SV was consistently strong but it took until 06:38 Sat morning to
catch him.  Around that time 29 NA stns got into the log in 20 mins, along
with KP4 and YS - a nice run.

Sun morning had V47KP, HK6KK and HL6ISX, but most remarkable was XE1RCS who
was hovering around the S7 mark and peaked to 10 over 9 on the long
beverage (300 deg) for around 15 mins at 06:45.  He was good on the 260 deg
550ft bev - but better on the 1100ft 300 deg).  Both mornings the band
collapsed suddenly at 06:55 and only a few weak and watery sigs were heard.
 K8CC was always there we couldn't even get a QRZ from him.

Pointing the other way - RW2F was an excellent sig - but not far from here!
 Only a couple of Asiatic Russian stns were heard/logged.

Initial results are:  616 QSO's,  50 DX mults, 26 state/province mults
giving 260Kish points.  Around 70 NA stns made it into the log.

Tnx for all the QSO's/points.  Have a bunch of digital pictures that I will
try to get on to the webpage this weekend.  Any reports on our sigs would
be well received.

73s Chris G3SVL and the GJ2D team.


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