[UK-CONTEST] CQ WW CW 2002 - GM7V Multi-Multi (long)

[Chris Tran GM3WOJ]

26th November 2002

Hello all
-----------------------
                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: GM7V
Operator(s): GM3WOJ,GM4CXM,GM0CLN,GM0GAV,GM0NAI,MM0CCC
Station: GM7V
Class: M/M HP
QTH: Invergordon
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  828    14       70
   80: 1326    21       95
   40: 1575    32      113
   20: 1978    34      125
   15: 1442    36      136
   10: 1266    28      121
------------------------------
Total: 8415   165      660  Total Score = 11,947,650
Club: North of Scotland CG
Comments:
Conditions noticeably poorer than in 2001, esp. on Saturday. After 10 years
of 'CT', we used a 'Writelog' network for the first time - worked OK but
several quirks are really annoying when running a pile-up (maybe I'm too
easily annoyed!) Thanks to everyone who worked GM7V - please see QRZ.COM for
info. about our new QSL Manager, Linda M0CMK.  73 Chris GM3WOJ
-----------------------------------
The above is what I posted to the 3830 reflector.   Running a Multi-Multi
station is always great fun, and everyone gets to operate as much as they
want (I do not like M/S or M/2 with more than 2 ops.- let's operate, not
hang about waiting to operate) Conditions were not good - on Saturday
morning I was trying to work JAs on the LP on 20m, and the echo was
unbelievable - you
went to receive and it was like a continuous tone coming out of the RX -
very
difficult to get even 1 letter of any callsign !   160 and 80 seemed to work
well, and there
seemed a good distribution of DX on the other bands, but just not the volume
of
stations that we had hoped for.  10m was disappointing.

CQ WW CW is not the place to use logging software for the first time, but
after numerous networking problems with CT (9.65) over the last couple of
years, we decided to use Writelog. Most of our operators liked it, but I
found it very annoying when working a pile-up. Without wishing to offend the
software writers, Writelog does need a lot of improvement to make it really
efficient CW contesting software.  One example - it doesn't highlight when
you or another band have worked a 'Mult', so the psychological boost that
you get from seeing new mults worked is absent.   Maybe someone will
correct me, because there are many options built into WL, but I've made a
list of annoying problems (which might not annoy other people!)
Networking - we still had a few problems, but WL does sort them out
rather well eventually.

Equipment/antennas - we still have 40m antenna problems, so worked the
whole of CQ WW CW with just a quarter-wave vertical with 2 elevated radials.
160m   TS-850sat + Alpha 91B + Dipole @ 80'
80m     FT-1000MP + Alpha 89 + Quarter-wave Vertical
40m     FT-1000MP + Alpha 87A + Vertical
20m     FT-1000MP + H/B amp. + 5ele @ 80'
15m     FT-1000MP + Alpha 91B + 5ele @ 60'
10m     TS-950sdx + Alpha 91B + 4ele @ 40'
All 6 stations had coaxial stubs fitted to the output of the amps., and we
had borrowed W3NQN band-pass filters (tnx GM3YTS at XT2DX)
(U.S.$500 for a set of 6) which were much better than our usual I.C.E. ones.

Interested in the comments about split-frequency working - I agree that this
should be discouraged (maybe even written into the rules?) but in 1 or 2
cases it was our only hope of working a station. ZL7C and ZK1MA handled
being in a rare DXCC entity very well during CQ WW SSB, but
maybe the operators this time were just overwhelmed by the pile-ups ?

Photos of GM7V Multi-Multi 2002 will be on   www.gm7v.com  soon.
73
Chris    GM3WOJ
www.qsl.net/gm3woj