[UK-CONTEST] F/G4PIQ/P NFD Report

[Andy Cook, G4PIQ]

I had fun! Once again missed out on helping the usual team to get beaten
by GD0EMG/P since I was committed to a holiday in France, but I did
manage to sneak a radio into the car for the first time! I can't think
of a much more civilised place to do NFD from - sitting on a sunny,
uncrowded campsite on the banks of the Loire with a bottle of wine! Had
to fit the operating around other important holiday activities like
going for dinner, but in the end did more than I had expected to get
away with - about 5 hours on time. 
 
Didn't have a great antenna - just a more or less random length or wire
slung between convenient trees with some counterpoise wires and didn't
do anything to optimise the 'score' - tried to make sure I worked as
many UK folks as I could, but could only operate for about 2 hours at
the start (1500-1700), 10 minutes after dinner (about 2115), and then
woke up at sunrise and managed to operate for nearly 3 hours (0400-0700)
before having to cycle to the Boulangerie for breakfast, drive to the
Supermarket to grab the last of the wine and then pack the car to come
home! 
 
No 160m - I'd left the extra capacitors for the ATU behind. Logging was
on a Pocket PC PDA in Pocket Excel - not to be recommended - dupe
checking was a rather painful process & typing with a stylus onto the
screen was not a great experience, but it did mean that I don't have to
retype the log later. Just ran 10W from the K2 (PA off) to make sure
that I didn't need to run the car engine to keep the battery charged. 
 
Nothing heard on 10m, no UK stations on 15m, only GM3JKS/P on 20 (but I
heard some of the Open Section G folks on scatter, but too weak to
work). 40 & 80 were good to the UK though. The usual suspects were very
loud on the low bands.
 
Band     QSO    Pts 
10m                0            0
15m                5          18
20m              35        127
40m              93        328
80m              54        208
160m              0           0
----------------------------------------
Total          187        681
 
Rig : K2/100, 10W
Ant : 35m inv-L, top @ 5m, sloping down to 3m