[UK-CONTEST] GM4YXI ARRL DX CW 2004

[pat058 at abdn.ac.uk]

Hi Folks,
Storm damage to the antennas in January and no time to do any repairs left
me QRV on 80m and 10m. Easy choice 

.80m single band in this contest. No
chance of a full time effort sadly so it was about 3 hours on Saturday
morning, 4.5 hrs on Sunday morning and the last 1.5 hours of the contest.
Beverages had to be taken down the preceding week to let the farmer spray
the field crop. Missed the bev on Saturday morning so ran out one for NA
once the band closed. For some reason (electrical, mechanical or
propagation I know not) this beverage seemed useless on Sunday morning,
which was a pity since apart from anything else, the snow static was awful
on the vertical. On Sunday night however, the bev was fantastic!
The first ‘packet pile-up’ which developed on Saturday morning was a bit
of a job to handle and it became obvious that the QRM at the NA end was
covering me up. Signals from New England were huge. Able to work to the
mid-west but no further than NE, CO, TX. Apart from the static, things
were less frantic on Sunday morning and I enjoyed a good opening to the
west coast from just before 0600 with W6OAT until 30mins AFTER my sunrise
with AJ6T. In all worked 17 CA, 3 AZ, 2 UT and one each in MT, OR, BC and
AB. Among these were some outstanding true 599 signals.
I will be sorry to miss the SSB leg this year but will be en route to
9M2-land. Hope to see you all from 9M2RPN in WPX SSB, multi-something with
Rich, G4ZFE.

GM4YXI SOSB 80m HP
QRV: 9 hours

Valid QSOs: 508 -- Mults: 51  -- Points: 77,724

Best wishes,
Keith GM4YXI