Topband: RSGB 1st 1.8 MHz Contest

[Tom Boucher]

Nice to work some old friends last night although G activity seemed low and the last couple of hours were a little painful. 160 QSOs with at least one dupe which was my logging error (sorry Terry!) Nice quiet channel for almost all of the contest and noticeably few keying clicks on the band - perhaps all those FT1000s have now been modified. The K3 once again showed its superb close-in performance and is just great in split Rx or diversity modes. My 85 ft high inverted 'L' is probably not the best transmitting antenna for a UK contest and I would probably do better with a horizontal dipole - next time perhaps.

Shack was minus 2 degrees C so as well as the amp, had the fan fire running full belt. Unfortunately tripped the mains breaker part way through so had to reduce power somewhat (the fire, not the amp!)

Conditions for DX were not particularly good although the band was open to North America with some weak signals. VE1ZZ called me 5 minutes into the contest - Jack must have been in full daylight at that time. K2ZM, N2FQ and N4RJ were the others with WD5R as my last Q. To the east UA9XF was a good signal but no JAs heard.

73
Tom G3OLB