[UK-CONTEST] CQWWCW - G3XTT - SOAB(A)

[Donald Field]

This was never due to be a serious entry as my antenna has to be manually rotated at the moment, only a low dipole for 80, and I have a serious noise problem locally (a thermostat which comes and goes) which means I don't like CQing, because there can be periods of several minutes at a time when I would be unable to hear any replies. So I decided to play Assisted, and see what I could work for the annual CW countries table. As it was I fell between two stools - my contest score isn't the greatest but I didn't work enough new band slots to prevent G3TBK taking me to the cleaners!

Conditions were well down on the SSB leg, after a promising start to the week. 160m was awful - nothing worked from the Caribbean. 80 wasn't much better. And although 40 was full of DX the JAs simply weren't there (GU4YOX, who was 40m single-band, tells me all his JAs were LP in the morning!). 10m was curious - very little on Saturday, but struggling on Sunday to produce some DX (VK9AA etc. to the East, zone 4 and 5 USA to the West) but nothing in depth. I did enjoy listening a couple of times on 20m to GW3JXN running the pile-ups - JA in the morning and W in the afternoon. He was working stuff I simply couldn't hear (and the GW prefix is obviously an attraction, too!). I wonder what John uses for an antenna? First "sweep" of 6 bands was with the lads at 5U5Z - guess I'll just have to join them again next year (I was 5U5Z last year, HC8N the year before that and XT2DX before that - a bit of a come-down struggling as a mere G!).

Anyway, enough of the waffle:

Band              QSOs         Countries             Zones
10                     117                 63                        23
15                     311                  95                       29
20                     370                 90                        27
40                     313                 107                      26
80                     338                   77                       14
160                   238                  51                         8

                         1687               483                     127

Claimed score: 1,880,020

Rig: FT-1000MP MkV, Quadra

Antennas: Tennadye T-10 at 45ft, 80m Inv-V at 45ft, 160 inv-L at 80ft, 40m sloper from 80ft.
Logging: IBM Thinkpad (ex-3B9C) running SD with Winkey.

73 Don G3XTT