[UK-CONTEST] CQWW 160 - G3XTT

[Donald Field]

Never intended a serious effort, as I was due to be out all day Saturday, and driving over 100 miles on zero sleep is never a good idea. Anyway, I didn't want to stand in Justin's way (G4TSH as M0C - reasonable serious effort). So very little effort the first night, other than the first hour or so, then again at dawn. Second night I was on from late evening, right through. Then Sunday evening I was on sporadically, around watching Midsomer Murders and doing domestic chores. But some impressions: Band in reasonably good shape. Some US around Saturday dawn, to midwest, and VP5/VE3NE was loud, but got nowhere with FM5GU. Saturday night was quite good, with the Caribbean peaking around 0300 - G4RCG/HI9 and PJ2S (a.k.a. G0CKP) both worked first call. But the star turn, to my astonishment, was the last hour of the contest. I had just about decided to call it a day, but found a frequency to CQ and obviously got spotted in the USA (indeed, I checked DX Summit today, and see that two US stations spotted me). The result was 60 QSOs from 2300 to 2400, including PR0F and EY8MM, but mainly US/Canada, across to W8/9. I think most of Europe had got distracted with the pile-up for YA8CQ (good signal here, but horrendous pile-up).

To put this activity thing into perspective, of 703 QSOs, I had: 

DL 109
G 24
OK 87
OM 20
PA 22
UA 44
UR 35
F 10
W/VE (94 at a quick count - for some reason CT hasn't counted them for me)

I know there were more G's on - do G's not call other G's in this contest? Maybe they think it's like CQWW and they don't count for points. But total G activity was nowhere near that from some of the countries listed above. Pity, when G activity on 160 in the "good old" days used to be very high. Astonishingly, with 59 DXCC countries worked, I didn't work GW. Heard three of them, but all in S&P mode. No GJ on as far as I could see. Nice to hear MD4K doing so well.

DX (well, nice mults) Worked: A61AJ C31LJ S9SS D4B VP5/VE3NE PJ2S G4RCG/HI9 PR0F EY8MM P3F JY9QJ 9H1XT TK5EP YV1DIG GU4YOX

Gotaways (heard): GW (!!) FM5GU CT3KN YA8CQ ZF2NT (not heard but apparently QRV): A45XR

Single-op (i.e. non-assisted), high power; Claimed Score (Pts, Q's, "countries", State/Provinces): 330,296 703 58 24  (slightly down on my "serious" entry of last year).

Station: FT-1000D (key clicks obviously not bad enough - several times stations crept up close to my run frequency and drove me off), Alpha 89, Inv-L at 80ft.

73 Don G3XTT