[UK-CONTEST] GM4YXI CQWW CW SOABHP U

[pat058 at abdn.ac.uk]

Hi guys,
Good to see so many reports on the reflector, including the stories, which
I always enjoy reading. Conditions were better than I guess we all feared
they would be and, IMHO (someone asked the question earlier
..think it was
Nigel ‘TXF), better than the SSB weekend.
Weather was OK for the most part, Saturday was pretty windy but no damage
and apart form a couple of difficult hours on Saturday evening where
static rain wiped out any band where I could not use a beverage to listen
on, I can’t complain.
Nothing broke outside (small furry animal damage to bevs got repaired the
weekend before and there seems to have been no repeats), the station was
OK although this contest has shown up some flaws in the receivers, BUT the
operator was a bit of a let down! A full week at work up until Friday
evening is not the best way to go into this contest. I needed a midday
unscheduled sleep on Saturday, as well as the early Sunday am break and at
other times I was functioning in ‘slow motion’. A few have commented on
their deteriorating ability to copy CW as the weekend progresses.  I’m a
serious member of that club


and my ‘best’ isn’t all that great for
starters. I have to apologies for my abysmal copying (and sending when I
had to use the paddles) especially on Sunday when even with a single
caller in the clear, it was a challenge to get the full call first time.
It was probably a minor factor but I realised on Monday and Tuesday (I’ll
spare you the details) that I was very dehydrated. I did not drink nearly
enough over the weekend and I am sure my already deteriorating cerebral
function was not helped as a result. Interestingly, I drink much more
during an SSB event to keep my throat going, and don’t have the
concentration problems.

I was a little late in getting started and 20m had little to offer. 80m
was good with great signals from North America and while they were also
there on 40m, I seemed to struggle all weekend, with the exception of the
post sunrise opening on Sat morning, to get anything going on 40. Looking
back my time on 160 seems expensive and I spent too long calling and not
raising several potential double mults. I probably stayed too long on 40
Sat morning but the W/VE/JA QSOs were all worth 3 points and I wasn’t
convinced I could do the same on 20 or 15. Also stayed on 80m right up to
sunrise, which produced a few nice mults and even a couple of JAs but
again was probably costly. As result I had a bad time on the high bands
Sat morning
.a few JA on 20m LP, but hardly a 3 point QSO at all on 15 or
10 and therefore very few Asian mults (no JA)
The afternoon (once I had wakened up) was OK to NA and 10m opened up
reasonably well. 15 then 20 lasted well into the late evening, open to
W/VE. Signals were good too from that direction on 40m when I eventually
got there and the second night wasn’t too bad, though sometimes quite
slow. I tried to get to 20m a bit earlier Sunday am and while LP was dead,
SP to JA opened up. I worked one JA on 15m SP but had to concentrate on
10m since I was so short of QSOs


maybe a tactical error, who knows. For
me, Sunday PM was not nearly as good to the west and I had to make sure I
did some mult hunting before each band closed (got caught out on
Saturday!)  Just after 1800 I managed to catch Stewart GZ7V’s attention
and he was good enough to move 10-15-20-40-80 (160 at night when the
antenna was connected!) This signalled the aurora to come when I turned
the antennas that far north, and I had a reasonable hour to NA on 15m with
the skewed polar path, including a call from KL7XX  at genuine 599+, and
almost my last QSO before the lights went out on 15m at 1900ish, KH7X. 40m
proved a struggle still, but 20m had the same auroral propagation, though
it was very unstable. At 2220 I was surprised to hear Rich, 9M2/G4ZFE
booming in on 20, almost regardless of where I had the beam pointing. He
was good enough to move to 40 (599+) and was still an easy copy on
80m
three double mults kept the flagging operator going! I had planned to
finish on 40 and 80 but it was clear that there were more points to be had
on 20m, though I probably missed a few mults as a result.

I will add my name to the list commenting on the ‘no call’ brigade. Zone
33 may have been guilty but I thought that a lot of Zn 8 and 9 stations
also fell into that category. As someone said before, they get away with
it since many of the callers probably pick up the call from their
preferred Cluster Crutch
..and if your pile-up doesn’t really need to read
what you send, then you can send at some incredible speeds, or am I REALLY
pedestrian plugging away at 30 wpm?

Really enjoyed it, despite the struggles. I still need to learn to read
the code better and find mults a bit faster than I do. SO2R is a complete
no-no on CW as far as I am concerned. Had a great time passing some mults
around and some folks were exteremely helpful..........to them, big
thanks!

Best wishes
Keith GM4YXI


CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 2003


      Call:      GM4YXI
      Category:  Single Op
      Power:     High Power
      Band:      All Band
      Mode:      CW
      Country:   Scotland
      Zone:      14

      BAND     QSO   QSO PTS  PTS/QSO   ZONES COUNTRIES


      160      178      207     1.16      8      42
       80      657     1098     1.67     20      70
       40      517      902     1.74     24      71
       20      702     1691     2.41     28      80
       15      604     1317     2.18     29      79
       10      812     2029     2.50     29      80
     ---------------------------------------------------

     Totals   3470     7244     2.09    138     422  =>  4,056,640