[UK-CONTEST] GM7V (GM3WOJ) SOABHP ARRL DX SSB 2002 (Longish...)

[Chris Tran GM3WOJ]

Hello all

Congrats to Andy on a new record.  Last year I only spent
a few hours each day on this contest, so this year I decided
at the last minute to try a bit harder. I have a very bad take-off
to the USA (here come the excuses!) but that didn't seem to
make any difference this year, the bands seemed in very
good shape.

I've been waiting impatiently for several weeks for a
replacement rotator for my 15m yagi (5ele computer design
on a 34' boom) so tried to fix it beaming about 300 degrees
- unfortunately this proved impossible, so had to go into the
contest with the 15m antenna fixed at about 260 degrees
- this made 15m a nightmare - not only were US signals
weaker, especially further W, but the Eu QRM was not properly
nulled out.  Never again with a non-rotatable yagi !


Band        QSOs       States
160            12              7
80              129           29
40              169           37
20               845          59
15               624          58
10              1369         59

Totals        3148        249     =   2,351,556 pts

I quite enjoyed the contest - it was a useful practice run
for this year's CQ WW SSB physical endurance test.
Total operating time was about 37 hours, although
only slept about 6.5 hours total so don't know where the
missing hours went ! I found that I could sleep in 2-hour 
sessions without worrying that I was really missing many 
QSOs or mults, if I chose the correct times of day - this
was not so easy because the bands were so good, especially
on the Saturday. 

I liked Andy's story of the 'two-way squeeze' technique - I
found a UA6 station who appeared to be moving his VFO
over a 3kHz range after every CQ call, just to keep a clear
'window' on the band ! Also, was berated by a German station
for operating on 'their' net frequency - he waited 15 minutes
before letting me know this of course !  (I distinctly remember
joining a net once, must have been in 1974 I think ..)

Had the usual distractions - feeding horses, cats and sheep,
collecting my daughter from the bus when ratemeter reading 200+ !

Now - back to antenna repairs ...
73
Chris     
www.qsl.net/gm3woj/