[UK-CONTEST] M6T (G4PIQ) 24hr SSB SO Unassisted Island IOTA

[Andy Cook, G4PIQ]

   BAND   Raw QSOs   Valid QSOs   Points   Mults   
 __________________________________________________

   80SSB     222         222       1584      50 
   40SSB     547         547       3054      82 
   20SSB     760         760       3939      98 
   15SSB     196         196       1266      41 
   10SSB      22          22        210      13 
 __________________________________________________

 Totals     1747        1747      10053     284 


    Final Score = 2855052 points.


An interesting and fun contest as usual, in spite of the conditions and less
than great form on my part. I'd originally planned to have another crack at
the Mixed mode section having got beaten last year by Sergei who apparently
spent a lot of the time doing S&P, but, since I seemed to have having a
pretty poor start to the event and thought about using this one to remind me
how all this SO2R stuff works in a busy single mode environment rather than
making it doublely complex - hadn't done a serious SO2R contest since last
October (other than BERU which is not busy, so 2nd radio is easy). Like Don,
I don't much like the mixed mode section in this one since you have this
need to move people between modes as well to keep the mult count up and
that's a really messy thing to do with one on a band at a time! In fact I
thought that I'd start the contest on SSB just to get a few QSOs under my
belt and go to CW when I felt like it. 3 hours in I hadn't touched CW and it
was really getting too late by then so decided than to stay single mode...!

Started the contest just a couple of minutes late since my Friday night
plans to get everything ready got scuppered, but things were close enough to
be ready to go. Tried moving people to 15m to start with and QSOs that would
have come off easily in previous years just didn't show at all - I also
checked to see that the radio was still working! 10 was even worse with
nothing really but South America. Bad luck to have such little Es. I didn't
go to run on 15m till a little over 2 hours in since it looked so poor.
Second station to call me was a JA who was hovering somewhere under my S7
noise level (usual problem on site). Struggled with him for 2 minutes or so
before saying - please try later - I figured there must be some bigger ones
about - of course that was the last one I heard...! 

Had some trouble with rain static - also seemed to bring up a line noise
problem on 80m which I managed to cure by wiring the phasing noice canceller
back in line - one of the things which I hadn't got round to doing before
the start. This also got rid of most of the site noise, so should have done
that earlier. In spite of being a bit deaf on 80m to start with I did manage
to work EM1U in Antarctica after moving him from 40m where he called me - so
that was a good Q. Think I blew up one of the FETs in the noise canceller
later by running 80m on the other radio and therefore sticking a lot of 80m
RF up the input without the box being protected by relays.... Not the first
time that's happened, but cheap and easy to fix. With this configuration I
end up having to choose between sticking the noise canceller on the 2nd
radio (with auto amplifier) or the run radio (with manual amp). I usually
stick it on the 2nd radio, but it makes it very much more clumsy for me to
move mults when running on 80m since I have to manually tune the amp
(interesting what gets to be a hardship isn't it.... but to be fair - the
LK800 can't just be tuned from a crib sheet - the settings are peaky enough
that you have to peak the TUNE control on a carrier!) Also the station isn't
currently configured to allow the main HF antennas to be used by the 2nd
radio and when running on 40/80 the 2nd radio is stuck on the A3 on top of
the 40m yagi. After failing to work one central American mult on 20m during
the night I checked and saw at least 8dB difference between the A3 and the
TH5. Some of that is extra feeder and the smaller antenna anyhow, but I
think there is some coax damage on that antenna. Need to fix that and allow
the TH5 to be on the 2nd radio when needed. 

Overnight was generally grim - 20 obviously closed (just about completely as
I recall), and I even found that I couldn't run much on 40 - certainly very
little from the US (not sure if it was shut or just inactive - worked a few
who sounded loud enough), so a lot of the night was spent on 80 and I worked
much more here than I have done before. Also spent a long time on 40m in the
morning since there appeared little point in going to 20m and 15/10 were
shut. Thank goodness for all those Germans and other Europeans who just kept
calling...... Managed to run a bit on 15 mid morning, but only long stuff in
Eu, and just snatched IC8 on 10 when the band opened as the MUF peaked. Most
of the 10m mults and Qs came from Saturday - Sunday was truly grim - thank
goodness for a few meteors to work a few closer mults!

Had a bit of amusement as a rather viscious looking wasp came into the shack
on Sunday morning and caused me to lose a bit of concentration. After a
while he crawled into my empty can of drink (which was actually full of
Cherry stones by now), so I lobbed the can out of the window and thought -
pah - he's got what he wants now....... 30 seconds later he was back in the
window definitely looking more agressive and wasn't co-operating well enough
to land on a flat place to get dealt with...... He next went for a full can
of drink - I thought - aha - and grabbed the nearest bit of paper, stuck it
on top of the can and taped it up....... Half an hour later I came to move
bands and realised that the bit of paper I'd used was actually the one with
the amplifier pre-tuning settings on.... This impeded my speed of band
moving for a couple of hours! Eventually removed the paper again to reveal
an even more hyper wasp (shows what caffine does to them!) which I did
eventually manage to deal with permenantly! 

Overall - more mults and Qs than ever before on 80/40 - 20 a bit short of
par, but not that far, 15 and 10 grim, and a lack of JA shoves the Pts / QSO
down. 

Andy