[UK-CONTEST] GB5HQ notes

[johndunnington]

Bob wrote...

1. 28MHz CW very strong signals on Saturday pm - must have been coming
straight down the A1.

Bob my impression was that UK propagation was better on Saturday afternoon
on 10m..the whole 24-hrs was spiked by a   Series of C-Class Flares the
first at 1045utc Sat then 1430, 2045, M-Class 2215utc, C-Class 0530, plus
several baby B-Class ones in between. For the most part Auroral Levels were
at Full House. It did drop 03Z when our 80m station got as far West as the
sun would allow before it rose here. TX NE IA MO we also found a couple of
ZL's at S/R.

All the operators reported regular "Pings from calling stations put after a
few hundred milli-seconds they were gone".
AA perhaps or aircraft going into Stanstead? Seriously though we had a fair
few excellent signals from UK but lots and we suspected wire/simple
multiband verticals and 100w or less were going to struggle given
conditions.
Without serious time slicing and getting 8-or-9 pre-published operating
rotas from several sites around the UK I suspect little could be done. We
used Back Scatter but frequently pure ground wave was very evident on GM and
up to 200-miles.
As for Comberton well there is a path a little E or W of South (175-185)
which proved a little gold mine for UK but at the expense of a wider
audience around on 75>105 called DL/PA/ON given this weekends propagation.

There were some fantastic strength Sth Americans PY LU and the very brief
Caribean exchanges at 2330 led me to think that it was a case of nothing
around but guess also the hurricane might have played it's part. TM0HQ was
40-over S9 at 07z Sunday and we were running at 12/hr mind you they were not
exactly going wildor nothing and went off.

We must not lose sight of the fact we were in an International Championship
Contest and UK QSo's count 1-pt and although very valuable we are in danger
of creating a senario where it becomes a band/mode slot chase with the most
difficult being 21/28Mhz. We dont score even an extra mult once the Z27 has
been worked on either SSB or CW on a particular band unless of course we can
find G3BJ or his contest call.

For those really keen I would suggest you download DX-Atlas and IONO-Probe
they are available on 30-day trial and once Iono-probe is running down load
the "Recent and Old Data". Take a look at what happened in the Week Map from
4th July to today.

Definately the hardest of 3-years running GB5HQ but we learnt a lot, had
probably more fun, and the new software brought the entire team closer
together we felt due to the instant talks/announcing. At times it felt we
were all in the same shack. It was great to see even the most experienced of
our crew doing their bit on the spotting station.

Life has now returned to normal at this QTH just need to put the shack back
then might get on the bands again.
Already have loads of pictures for the Web-site.

John G3LZQ