[UK-CONTEST] MW5A op G3WVG SOAB

[G3WVG]

MW5A   .....Op. Ian  G3WVG........ SOAB
Many thanks again to Steve GW4BLE for inviting me to use his excellent
station in South Wales ... The Station performed well but I didn't.
I started the contest tired and went downhill for the next 48Hrs. It was a
poor start ....I kept a tally of my QSO rates against last years numbers,
and after the first 2 hours I was already 150 behind !
I don't really know what to make of conditions. They seemed to me to
fluctuate wildly throughout the weekend. I found 40M abysmal for the first
couple of hours with only 80M generating a reasonable rate and (oddly)
better transatlantic propagation. At about 0300.. 40M came good again with
decent USA signals. Auroral effects seemed to come and go several times over
the 48Hours. There was a weird wideband noise on 40/80 M which seemed to be
coming from the East .. It could well have been local to Newport in South
Wales .. but whatever it was it certainly didn't make it easy to copy weak
signals .
15M seemed to be open for Far East DX much earlier than it should have done
and this led me to think that HF conditions were going to be superb for the
rest of the day ...Well they were OK but not brilliant.
10M very poor ...but I guess better than what we are going to get next year.
Predictably the best band was 20M with the best of the conditions at around
1700 on the Sunday ... Loads of W6/W7 for over an hour.
Lowlights of the contest were too numerous to mention.   But I will admit to
wondering why VE8AT had called me but then didn't go on to complete a QSO.
I thought the call seemed familiar and then in a flash of realisation looked
at the dial to discover that  I  was operating on 14100, the beacon
frequency...ho-hum.
Highlights .. Well despite feeling (and probably looking) like a Zombie for
the last 6 hours of the contest, and making only a handful of QSOs, I only
suffered from minor halucinations.  You know the sort of stuff ...imagining
the desk is sloping, seeing your mug of tea moving ...trivial stuff really.
                Q   pts     Z.   C.
>
> 160m: 64  66        6    36
>
> 80m: 747 1155    16   67
>
> 40m: 900 1775    26   78
>
> 20m:1226 2713  29   80
>
> 15m: 642 1577    27   75
>
> 10m: 96    143     16  41
>
> Totals: 3675 7429 120 377 497 Score 3,692,213

SOAB unassisted ...FT1000MP + Quadra (with thanks to Nigel G3TXF)
160 shunt fed tower/ 80 dipole at 40'
20/15/10 TH7