[UK-CONTEST] M6T (Op G4PIQ) SOABHP ARRL CW

[Andy Cook, G4PIQ]

                    ARRL DX Contest, CW

Call: M6T
Operator(s): G4PIQ
Station: G4MRS

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: JO02PB
Operating Time (hrs): 41.5
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:  146    36
   80:  295    45
   40: 1014    53
   20:  896    58
   15:  835    57
   10:  295    38
-------------------
Total: 3481   287  Total Score = 2,928,261

Well Lee - in my case the answer is a little over 2000 QSOs, but I'm not
the competition - as soon as I heard Robert, GI0KOW on I knew that
competing wasn't on the agenda! 
 
Some very rough ramblings.....
 
It was a much better contest than I had expected - low band conditions
were good - in fact all bands to 15m were good. 10m was patchy from up
here, but still better than we could have hoped for. 
 
Before the contest I knew that the 40m & 80m antennas were broken at the
station and went over to fix them on the previous Sunday. However -
having spent a complete afternoon working with the 402CD and checking
all the usual problem areas around the loading coils and wrestling with
some hawthorn bushes that have grown up since the tower was installed I
still had a dead 40m antenna. I took Wednesday afternoon off to have
another go at fixing it (thought that the feeder must have been
damaged), but eventually found that the driven element insulator had a
carbonised path inside it between the two elements - and the elements
weren't coming out of the insulator - so I was stuff. Luckily - I had a
new 402 in my garage which I'd bought to put up at my VHF location and
never got round to installing, so I had spares and was able to take
Friday afternoon off to fix the 402CD and re-install the 80m loop and
the beverage. Just to add to the pile - after it was already dark on
Friday night I found that the 160m antenna was dead too and had to
wrestle that down and back up the tower and round trees, feeders &
buildings in the dark! 
 
Unfortunately - taking those afternoons off only shifted a load of work
into the previous week's evenings - and combined with a bit of a
madhouse at work for the past couple of weeks meant that I was knackered
before I even started!
 
This event was quite different to the last ARRL CW which I did seriously
in 2001. This time, the second radio was less helpful since for much of
the time there was really only 1 band decently open. It really struck me
that after 40 closed in the morning, 20 just wasn't going this year - a
bit of an opportunity for sleep as it happened! 
 
Wasted some time early on Saturday morning working some very marginal
10m stuff, but applying the model that says you need to get to 10m early
in case its even worse later in the contest. In the end had an hour or
so of reasonable rate on Saturday on 10 and 20 mins or so right at the
end of the opening on Sunday, but lots of states missing - no real '7's
and most 0s missing. 
 
Lots of QSOs on 40m, though missed too many multipliers. 80 & 160 about
as good as can be expected from the noisy site, and great fun to run
some decent rate on 160. Especially on Sunday morning conditions were
excellent.
 
Once again - some outstanding out of body experiences! Totally trashed
and had no coffee Sunday morning. Was standing up dancing about
operating trying to keep awake! Beverage failed since I'd just thrown it
all together on Saturday evening and it ended up taking 45 mins or so to
fix it - but running around in the cold for that probably did wake me up
a bit!
 
Probably get on for SSB - let's hope that's good too!
 
73,
 
Andy, G4PIQ

Rig : 2 x FT1000MP + PAs

Ant : 160 - Inv-V @ 23m
       80 - Delta Loop @ 23m
       40 - 402CD @ 24m
       HF - TH5 @ 24m + A3 @ 26m (2nd radio)

1 x 140m Beverage