[UK-CONTEST] 80m CC CW - G3SXW

[Steve Jones]

Nice to work you Roger, and I can concur with the conditions being
weird. SJJ was only 56 here, and only heard once towards the end of the
contest. I missed having a vertical up to switch to.  

I worked 48 or 49, and not having done more than one of these contests
last year I was obviously not up to speed regarding the best tactics. I
ran for the first 35 mins and then had a very slow S and P session,
running agn for the last 15 mins or so.

I was running about 90w out into a low dipole which I had badly tuned in
the rain the day before, discovering last night that it was resonant
quite a bit below 3.5mhz! I was using my ic7400 with 400hz filtering,
rather than my usual ft1000, but think I will return to the ft1000 for
AFS.

I encountered similar "deafness" problems, with a couple of stations - I
called G3RIR on 4 separate times during the contest for several minutes,
yet he was 58 to 9 here - strange conditions I guess, or maybe some
stations have a very high local noise level.

I used N1MM software in FD mode rather than SD, mainly so I could use
the bandmap for S and P mapping - worked a treat. I even had a go at
setting up psk and rtty with n1mm after the test, so you may see me on
the data mode session if I get the hand of it ;-) 

Nice to work some unfamiliar calls, and I will be attempting to work
more than one of these sessions in 2005!

73

Steve


-----Original Message-----
From: uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of G3SXW
Sent: 04 January 2005 03:30
To: UK-Contest
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] 80m CC CW - G3SXW

Dear UK-Contest Reflector,
It's confirmed then: ALL entrants to tonight's 80mtr CC CW
were in the QRP section haha. Even the likes of BUO, SJJ were
S6 at best. The loudest signals were from Ukraine. Even
TXF/WVG, ten miles away, were S7 max. Wierd condx indeed.
Shame, cos ionospheric noise was v. low.
I made a meagre 48 (QRP) contacts. Many stations were not
hearing me. Some (G5LP, G3RSD, G3RIR come to mind, but
they were probably QRO) were also not hearing several other
callers.
PS - I'm back on this reflector after a 1-2 year break. Let's see if
it has improved at all. Re-re-re-re-reading the same >message
only provides screenfuls of garbage, wheat-from-chaff syndrome.
Rule number one: if it's more than one screenful then <DEL>.
Happy New Year - 73 de Roger/G3SXW.
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