[UK-CONTEST] GW0GEI CQWW Multi Two

[Steve Jones]

Hi
A short and late report from me, due to work pressures since crawling
into work on Monday morning!
 
My planned multi op entry into CQWW SSB turned into a SOSB 20m low power
effort in October, due to a combination of failing to get all the LF
antennas back up in the air,  a lightning strike on my broadband router,
and my HF amp not being fixed following a fault on the eve of the WAE
SSB contest!
 
My plans for a first multi op outing from the new external contest shack
here in CQWW CW nearly followed on from SSB in the same fashion.  The
night before the contest my replacement router got damaged by another
short lightening burst nearby, the 40/80 vertical was still not
installed and my 80m inverted V developed an antenna and/or coax fault
mid week – plus my HF amp was still not fixed. This time I was
determined that we would get on the air, as although I had three ops
pull out I still had two ops willing to put in some time.  This
combination resulted in me treating the contest as a training/testing
event, with the emphasis on fun and learning (the other two local ops
have little experience of contesting, and I had not used the key on the
air for months).
 
We worked in reasonable dry conditions on Thursday evening and Friday
morning to replace some damaged coax on the run station 204ba; repair an
element on the multi station log periodic, beam, and to try finding the
fault on the 80m inverted V, The weather deteriorated on the Fri pm so I
finished connecting up a temp ground radial system and rough tuning of
the 40/80m vertical in a sleet storm just as it got dark!  I replaced
the second damaged router with an old  broadband modem and brought the
indoor study pc into action as the master station in N1MM, from which we
would get spots via the cat 5 cable network out to the new shack.  The
lack of an amp meant we would be running only 200w from my ft1000 on the
run station and 100w max from an ft990 on the mult station.
 
We had two ops (GW0GEI and GW0ETF)starting the contest and we worked
thru until only 0230 before retiring for a few hours kip prior to the
greyline start on 160m and 80m around sunrise, when we got reasonable
runs into the USA. Whilst I ran on 40m the second station moved up to
20m for some S and P while we waited for 20m to be open enough to run.
Being a relaxed sort of effort we stopped for both a late breakfast
lunch and evening meal (washed down with some beer and red wine!).  A
third op (GW3PRL) joined us late evening, to S and P in the early hours
whilst the other two got some more hours kip (told you this was a
relaxed effort!).
 
Sunday followed a similar pattern, with two of us running 15m and 20m
where possible, and mult hunting / spot hopping.  
 
N1MM software and 2 new microham keyers worked well, although the two
laptops used for both stations had some memory issues when the band maps
got really full.  
 
The score is really embarrassing for a multi two effort (but the other
two ops were fairly novice contesters, and I did take some time out at
times for giving lessons on using N1MM!, and we were adopting a laid
back approach, and using low power …. And any other excuses I can think
of! ) . Lots of lessons learnt (like prepare the antennas and test, re
test, and test again weeks before the contest!)  but at least I have
encouraged two new people to take part in future single op and multi op
contests from here.  Highlights were a couple of 200+ runs on 80m and
20m, and working ZL2CT/MM (Chris GM3WOJ) on 40m on his way back to the
UK.
 
Equip:  FT1000  and FT990
Antennas : Hygain 204ba @45ft ;  Tennadyne T8 @30ft;  160m dipole @
80ft;  HF2V 40/80m vertical (with poor temp radial system)
Software : windows XP professional and N1MM networked over two shack
laptops and a home based desktop pc connected to broadband.
 
   Band            QSOs    Pts     Cty      ZN
   1.8                318       455     51         11
   3.5                306       443    68          14
     7                 451      662     90          24
    14                747     1515    89          25
    21               138       232     50          15
    28                   3           6       2            2
 Total            1963     3313    350         91
Final Draft Score: 1,461,033 points
 
Congrats to MW5A and GM4AFF etc for making such decent single op scores.

 
Oh well – the only way is up from here! 
 
73
 
Steve GW0GEI
 

-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.10/189 - Release Date:
30/11/2005