[UK-CONTEST] IARU/WRTC2002 - GB5HQ

[Chris Tran GM3WOJ]

Tuesday 16th July 2002

Hello all

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley"
Robert Burns (1759-1796)

It's always a very enjoyable experience to activate one of the
'RSGB' callsigns (GB5CC, GB5HQ etc) in a major event,
and we were really looking forward to this year's IARU event,
particularly with the added interest of WRTC 2002.
When we last operated GB5HQ in 2000, we had 5 operators
to operate 4 stations covering 4 of the 6 bands (GB4HQ and
GB3RS were QRV on 80 and 10m)   This year, we decided
to have only 3 operators to cover all 6 bands, on the basis that
(a) it's only a 24-hour event so everyone can operate for the
whole 24 hours (WRONG!) and (b) only 3 bands would be
useable at any one time (CORRECT!)

To cut a long story short, our top CW operator had to withdraw
36 hours before the contest because of a family bereavement,
and our reserve CW operator was unable to come as well.
Now down to 2 operators for 6 bands for 24 hours - not looking
so good really !  To cap it all, during the event I suffered a
severe attack of a stomach bug, which prevented me from
operating for almost 11 hours - things definitely looking bad !
(before everyone starts jumping up and down and saying
'our group would have operated GB5HQ' it's worth pointing
out that a lot of UK contesters were away at WRTC, and
that I think the HFCC do have difficulty finding groups able or
willing to activate these callsigns.  Also, many operators are
enjoying a summer holiday and unavailable)

Still - we were undermanned, and there's no excuse for that
really - I just got the planning wrong.

We found the conditions mixed - 20m good, with constant
pile-ups (mostly Eu) sprinkled with DX like ZK1USA etc.
15m patchy - really coming to life in the last hour of the contest
10m awful - few sigs heard, and deep QSB - really disappointing.
We switched from SSB to CW in roughly 1-hour spells, and the
ratemeter stayed above 200 most of the time we were both
operating, with many periods of over 500 QSOs/hr, but we
were of course unable to sustain our target rate of 250/hr
for the whole 24 hours.   Finished with 3498 scoring QSOs.

     BAND      QSO   QSO-PTS   PTS/Q    ZONES  HQ STNS
      160          36           78               2.17         4
10
       80           31           65               2.10         6
12
       40         229        643                2.81       10
14
       20       2160      7538               3.49        43
36
       15       1018      3926               3.86        41
28
       10            24          64               2.67          5
8
     ---------------------------------------------------
     Totals   3498    12314               3.52      109              108
     Score: 2,672,138 points


Operators :  John Maclean MM0CCC, Chris Tran GM3WOJ

Equipment : FT-1000MPs + Alpha amps + Monobanders/verticals

OJ stations - we found it difficult to work them (much more
difficult than the S5 WRTC 2000 teams) - missed 2 altogether
on any band (OJ1N and OJ2Q) - maybe their geographical
location in Finland had an effect on this - I have not seen a
map showing how spread out the OJ operating sites were.

We ignored the DX Cluster completely and concentrated
on giving as many stations as possible the GB5HQ multiplier,
and we're just disappointed that we could not work more
stations.    Worked very few UK SCCs - M4R and GW7X
being the only 2 (I think - apologies to any I didn't see in the
log)

Please send QSL cards for GB5HQ (2002) to Linda Taylor
M0CMK, QTHR.

Next stop - IOTA EU-008 with GM5A (and enough operators!)

73
Chris     GM3WOJ