[UK-CONTEST] GM7V (GM4YXI) CQWW SSB SOAB HP

[pat058 at abdn.ac.uk]

Hi Folks,
Not been very active in the last few months so was looking forward to
this. Usual last minute long list of antenna work to do in the days prior
to the contest (took a few days holiday!) 
.checking 20/15/10m yagis (not
well enough, as it turned out), fixing 40m vertical radials, put up 80m
vertical, stringing out beverages, reposition 160m inverted L. Also put up
2nd 40m vertical well away from everything else but, in retrospect, I
never did any 40m on the second radio so that was a waste of time. ICE 419
filter never did arrive in time (ironically, it was waiting for me when I
got home from work on Monday).
Managed a little sleep on Friday night so I felt reasonably ready for the
start, though the flare and a K index of about 7 on Friday night didn’t
really encourage me.

The start was very tough. I could not make myself heard on 160m, 20m was
all but closed and 80m was a mess. One auroral JA audible on 15m. No
transatlantic signals on 160m all night, no 80m run to W/VE and none of
the NA stuff other EU was working on 40m was audible here. Did eventually
get a run on 40m to W/VE after my sunrise. Saturday morning was not very
inspiring. JA lp on 20m was patchy, NO JA at all on 15m and only just
possible to work Zone 17, but not beyond, on 10m. Mostly worked EU with
some AF and AS mults. Attempts at passing mults were failing due to
propagation. At 1130, my 15m yagi developed high SWR during torrential
static rain. Decision time! This antenna had never so much as coughed for
5 years
..why now? Stop
lower tower
.gamma match fine but caked in
bird-s..t, which was all wet. ( By the way, for anyone who may remember a
discussion I had about keeping the birds off the antennas last winter, the
plastic owl got covered in shit too!) I can only guess this stuff was
conductive enough when drenched to provide a low resistance path to mess
up the gamma match, since cleaning it seemed to fix the problem. Tower
back up but 160m inv-L is now knotted in tree in the blowing gale. Back on
just after 1330. Possible to run NA on 20m then 15m then to 10m which was
kinda open in a patchy sort of way if I beamed SW. Late afternoon saw 10m
actually improve a bit with a reasonable 90mins of propagation. 20m closed
very early and the remainder of the evening was a bit of a slog.
Propagation seemed a little better on Sunday. Could run 80m to NA for a
while but never heard any of the stuff that I could hear G and GW working
on 160m. Heard VP2E and PT0F on 160 but they CQ’d in my face. 40m was OK
around sunrise. 20m lp was still pretty grim come daylight and although
15m was packed with stations, they were almost all only worth one point! I
worked maybe 5 JAs on a skewed path beaming due east. At least a few Asian
zones were workable today. 10m never really opened to the west on Sunday
so I had to concentrate on 15m where signals were good but the QRM was
grim. By Sunday night I could make virtually nothing on 40m at all and
even 80m was dead slow and stop. 20m, however, filled with auroral signals
for at least a few QSOs to finish.
Propagation could have been worse, given the forecasts, but the old
attenuator in the sky certainly had its way.
Highs
  40m sunrise opening, including KL7RA
	All those guys who moved for mults
thanks
	Actually surviving fairly well physically
Lows
   15m yagi failure and the 160m antenna in knots
	Trying to find a run frequency on 15m
	40m SSB


.

      Call:      GM7V
      Category:  Single Operator
      Power:     High Power
      Band:      All Band

      BAND     QSO      ZONES 	COUNTRIES

      160      	156     8      	47
       80      	657     16     	72
       40      	423     24      86
       20      	907     32      98
       15     	1339    29      101
       10      	630     26     	103

	5,273,388 pts

Congrats to Andy and Steve for stuffing me again! I'll have to figure out
a way of getting more 3 pointers. Well done.

CU in CW with home call.
Keith GM4YXI (GM7V)
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