[UK-CONTEST] IOTA - PJ2Y Multi Island

[afh at blueyonder.co.uk]

Greetings from Curacao,

The weather is predictably warm and the sea is a great shade of turquoise.  However... sadly our score is going to be down on last year's.  Have to wait till our return to get the exact totals, but it was around  2130 Qs, 320 mults, 4.5M pts.  

Conditions were awful, which made things difficult being so far from Europe.  Multipliers are the problem from out here.  10m never opened, and the only Qs we managed there were CT9M and an unsuspecting ZD7 that we pounced on and pleaded for a QSO :-)   We fared a bit better on 80m, but even with a 3 element delta loop pointing towards EU it was a struggle.  The array of 5 ele monobanders we have here worked well on 15m and 20m, so that was some compensation.

I think Murphy was a computer engineer !   He cost us about an hour overall with various problems...
one computer gave up the ghost half way through.  Our phone line, and therefore DX cluster connection disappeared after a few hours.  Another PC decided to emit wide band noise and had to be switched off.  So a major station reconfiguration was needed in the middle of the contest.

It was great to work so many UK stations, and interesting to hear relative strengths from the DX side.  Quite a few special calls getting an airing as well.  

Well, can't spend too long on email, the beach beckons !

73s to All  

Alan  PJ2/G3XSV
        ( and G3TKF, G4FKA, G0HFX and M0WLF)

PS. The other half of the Bristol Contest Group had a joint operation with EI7M in Cork.  Looks like they faired better score-wise.