[UK-CONTEST] M6T (G4PIQ) SOABHP Report for ARRL SSB

[Andy Cook, G4PIQ]

Summary:
Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:    0     0
   80:   96    25
   40:  248    44
   20:  363    52
   15:  694    58
   10:    1     1
-------------------
Total: 1402   180  Total Score = 753,840

This contest clearly fell into the 'wasn't meant to be' category. I
thought I was actually pretty well prepared - I managed to be all ready
early enough to get 90 mins sleep before the contest. I left home early
enough to be at the station and ready to go 5 mins before the start and
everything seemed to be working. Operated the first hour on 40 - pretty
grim - very hard to make an impression - next hour dropped down to 80
for a bit and then back to 40 and it went off with a bang - much better.
Some good rare mults in the log early on 40 - SD, DC, VE5 - and folks on
80 were telling me un-prompted that I was very loud (shame about the
usual noise problem on receive). Trogged on through to 0407 on 40 & 80 -
never heard anyone on 160 - and then the lights went out.... Thought -
bugger - which amp has blown up this time - and I wasn't even
transmitting at the time! Reached for the local breakers and found that
they were intact. Went outside and although the many of the
street-lights / building lights were still lit on site (this is a 4000
person Telecoms development centre!), some weren't and I could smell
diesel fumes - some standby generators had clearly started, but the
G4MRS shack wasn't on one! Hung around for 30 mins or so and figured
that the fault obviously wasn't transitory and that no one was going to
come and fix before the morning so went home to bed. 
 
Got up in time to get back to site for about 1050 and the power was
still off. However, as I sat about wondering what to do and thinking
that we have had better power than this in 9G, XT & 5U, the lights came
back on and I was off on 20 by about 1115. Rates were OK, but not great.
Once 15 opened well I went there and was running stuff quite nicely when
just before 1430 a couple of people called me and said that my signal
was bad. Listening on the second radio I could hear big splatter on 10m
from speech peaks and a check of the SWR showed it through the roof.
Went outside to wind tower down and have a look and found luffing winch
on the tower siezed. Treid to free it for some time and failed, and then
searched around for another winch and installed that. By this time it
was getting dark and raining so took beverage down and went home - not
in disgust - but nearly! 
 
Came back Sunday lunchtime, luffed tower - found one corroded joint with
arc marks. Cleaned and weatherproofed this, put tower back up and then
ran another 4.5 hours till I had 1400 QSOs and about 750k points. First
time I've worked VE8 in this contest for years and worked it on both 20
& 15 - also had VO2 in log on 20 - could have been some good mult totals
this year - at least on the bands which were open. 
 
10 was interestingly bad - only station I heard (though clearly not
spent all weekend listening) was KC1XX who was actually quite a
reasonable signal when I worked then and they were there for at least 30
mins. I heard no one else from the US - including the folks further
South who I would have expected to more likely to be there - just some
Carribean & South America, though looking at the cluster after the
contest I see some of the more Southerly folks spotted elsewhere in Eu.
The experience of KC1XX being the only station audible was double odd
since on 15 on Saturday - before it really opened properly, the folks in
the South East of US (FL, PA etc.) were much louder than the guys in the
far North East (MH etc.) like XX.
 
Planning to be on for BERU - lets see what can go wrong in this one!
 
73,
 
Andy, G4PIQ
 
Rig : 2 x FT1000MP + LK800 + Alpha 87A

Ants
160 : Inv-V Dipole @ 23m
80 : Delta Loop @ 23m
40 : 402CD @ 24m
HF : TH5 @ 24m + A3 @ 26m
160m long Beverage