[UK-CONTEST] CQWW SSB 2004 : GM5A Multi-Multi Report

[Smith, Colin R (UK Edinburgh)]

CQWW SSB 2004 : GM5A MULTI-MULTI REPORT
=======================================

Points Breakdown
================

          QSO    ZN    DX
 160M     739    10    60
  80M     795    15    65
  40M    1719    29   110
  20M    2316    37   138
  15M    2152    38   143
  10M     894    32   140
TOTAL    8615   161   656

SCORE    12,747,651


Operators : W0GJ GM3YOR GM4AFF GM4FDM GM0CLN GM0HZI GM0NAI GM0RLZ GM0TTY MM0BSM MM0CCC MM3GVE


After a catalogue of disasters in the weeks leading up to the contest it was a miracle that we were
ready at all for the start.   Two broken rotators, a 4ele 20m monobander which decided it would try
to tunnel to Australia, nose first (ouch), and total mains power failure on the site one week prior
to the event were just the highlights of an illustrious list!   Another working (well almost!)
rotator was eventually installed on the Thursday before the start, a 2 element quad replaced the
4 ele monobander and we eventually had mains power returned two days before the contest!

A huge vote of thanks is due to those who helped rectify the problems but in particular to Stu MM0BSM,
Colin GM0RLZ and Neil GM0HZI who worked wonders and put in some very long hours to sort it all out.

As for the contest... sadly we added to our list of problems when we encountered MAJOR problems on
the first night with our 80m station.    Suffices to say that in the first 12 hours we only had 81
QSOs on that band, causing several sense of humour bypasses amongst the team, and one set of welded
relay contacts in an amp!   As a cure (but not a great one) we erected a sloping dipole and installed
a standby amplifier on Saturday.   This was used until the end.   In addition the computer network was
not at all stable and had to be regularly re-booted in order to keep the data flowing between stations.
Plenty of work to do before CQWW CW then!

Now that all the bad bits are out of the way I must say that we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.   We had
great team spirit and a big enough team to ensure that everyone managed to sleep for a while.   We were
also pleased to welcome Glenn Johnson W0GJ who joined us from Minnesota for the weekend.   Glenn was a
welcome addition to team and we would all like to thank him for his help.   It was pleasing to see that,
after all his work running amateur radio exams and setting up a ham club in Bhutan, Glenn was on the mic
for our only two QSOs with that country.

Conditions on the bands were, as stated by many before us, great for this point in the solar cycle.
We had set a target of 10 million points before the contest and easily managed to surpass it.
I'll let the band breakdown (above) explain the rest.

Finally some thanks.    First of all to Stirling & District ARS (www.gm6nx.com) for hosting the GMDX
Group (www.gmdx.org.uk) CQWW Contest entries this year, secondly to all who helped get GM5A on the air
in time and lastly to all of you for the QSOs.  They are very much appreciated.

Please look for GM5A again in CQWW CW.

Regards
Colin Smith (GM0CLN)
On Behalf Of The GMDX Group Contest Team


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