[UK-CONTEST] EU Sprint Spring SSB M0RHI (Low Power)

[Royce Hunt, M0RHI]

Little summary of contest:

80m: 0
40m: 46
20m: 35
========
Total: 81

Bits and bobs:
Not a serious contest, but it all worked in the end, was a good laugh.
It seems Tonno is going for 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the top 30 scores of all 
time! Well done Ton!

Now the mandatory write-up:

Not a great contest for me, as I as operating from my home QTH but 
thoroughly enjoyed it, however, this contest was never meant to be. I 
was hoping to use my club's station but unfortunately, was unable to. So 
my day went something like this:

(All times BST) :)
1000: Went outside and put up the HF2V (I take the top section out as my 
parents have an active dislike in all things amateur radio) and the 
nested dipoles up for 20 and 40. I push my trusty fishing pole 
arrangement up, which promptly snaps with the wind and tension in one of 
the dipole legs. My dipoles finally go up at 22ft instead of 30ft. Not 
to worry....
1030: Briefly check the sprint website, to make sure it hasn't done 
anything silly like die, or mess up during the night...
1100: Arrive at work and go about work the usual way.
1300: Receive an SMS from M0CLW asking me to come on IRC. I do so, via 
GPRS and decide to ring Simon. Apparently the website is incorrect. Here 
follows a short ditty about what went wrong: At 0000 the night before a 
contest, it loads a separate file to allow it to do a final countdown to 
contest time, in hours instead of days. This seems to have changed the 
start and end times of the contest by 1 hour, due to the omission of 2 
letters from the code. This is because the server we use wasn't in 
daylight saving when we wrote and tested the site, but it is now. Grr. 
Anyway, back to the story, I read out a stopgap solution to Simon over 
the phone, at which point I have to hang up as there's water running 
through the ceiling and General Dogsbody RHI has to go sort it out 
(fine, I'm getting paid for it).
1445: I realise that the EU Sprint site is about to break in 15 minutes, 
due to the fact that the stopgap that I told Simon to write out was just 
that, a temporary solution.
1455: Still waiting to leave work, damn the customers, they just keep 
coming.
1505: Leave work and ring Simon back. No answer. Ring Pete, M3PHP and 
get him to alter some code as another stopgap until I can actually get 
home. Unfortunately, I'm the only one that knows the intimate workings 
of the website, so I'm the only one able to fix it.
1520: Get home, finally, red faced, as I have ran all the way from the 
bus stop. As I'm approaching my house, conspicuous by its absence is the 
nested dipole arrangement. No time for that now
1530: Computer is finally on the interweb again, and I fix the bug. It 
took me all of 20 seconds to fix, and just a small discrepency that 
forces the website to use UTC, not BST.
1535: Make the trip outside to see where the dipoles are. In a heap on 
the lawn. I note that the wind blew the fishing pole arrangement down 
and set about putting it back up, in which time the dipole gets tangled 
in the HF2 and snaps the fishing pole. Dipoles finally go back up at 20ft.
1557: I finally enter the shack, switch on, and find that the proximity 
of my antennas has detuned the HF2. No time for that now. I decide just 
to run with the 40 and 20m dipoles.
1559: Everything sorted, ready to contest!

So as you can see, thrilling day! Bit more planning maybe in future, 
perhaps. Anyway, I put in a valiant effort, but using the 40m dipole on 
80 yielded nothing at all. Never mind, I tried my best, low power entry.

I may be on in the CW section, but not for all of it, just a hour or two 
tops, maybe 40, saves me having to mess about with snapped fishing poles!

Fear not, this temporary teething trouble shall not happen again, it's 
all fixed now!

Royce, M0RHI
Webmaster, EU Sprint.com
One of many LIDs in the contest.