[UK-CONTEST] 80m CC CW

[Cooper, Stewart]

><Keying
>stumbled occasionally, not known that recently. Sometimes when I pressed F4
>to send my callsign it started half way through.>

How bizarre - I also had this problem! In my case it was caused by a new set of relays which I put into my DX Doubler. It looks like I'll have to adjust CT (not a Windows program!) keying delay to handle this in some way. I'd never have imagined that one relay switching another relay would make that much difference.
I thought everyone was weak, but most heard me when I called, although I had to do a lot of repeating. I felt that southern G's were obviously having a problem hearing me - high noise, etc. I had a highish background noise level, which was worse on Sunday.
I used two radios, and two verticals. A quarter wave with lots of radials and an HF2V with 2 radials which I threw into the air in the dark before the contest. It turned out to be a waste of time, but I thought I'd try it anyway. I ran on 3529 and searched using the other radio ...and as expected the separation was insufficient (at about 200 yds). This was more to test the DX Doubler auto-SO2R PTT facility than to seriously try SO2R in a single band event!!
I did have a problem with people stealing my run frequency - 3 times. One time was my fault for dwelling too long on a 'pounce'. I don't expect the others heard me. I didn't work them. The EWE antenna did help with a couple of very weak stations, in reducing the background noise.
So, I think I worked about 55 stations (can't remember now) which included a few LYs, DL and F stations.

FT1000MP (100w) + 1/4wave vertical + bev NW + EWE NE
FT847 (100w) + HF2V - no CW filter + digi filter is useless.

Stewart
GM4AFF

What a lot of words for such a short contest! Sorry.



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