[UK-CONTEST] AFS CW is alive and well!

[Andy swiffin]

>   A break down of my log gives an approx number of Gs
>    
>   123 G3, GM3 and GW3s
>    
>   When all the G3s have gone what will become of AFS?  We are led to

> believe that CW 
>   is booming amongst the new stations.  Not much sign of it here!


Simple, you're just going to have to resort to s&p and look for the the
gm8, there was one going begging :-)

To be fair - I didn't work any other G8 station either or come to think
of it any G6s I can remember (I don't have the log here so apologies if
I've forgotten someone).

With all those huge numbers everyone else is reporting I'd almost
decided to keep quiet about my ......  104 . (phew, there I've said it
now).

OK, I  wasn't in it seriously.  I enjoy CW contests - just not very
good at it, but this was some great practice.  I've finally managed to
get N1MM hooked up to my TS830 (tricky cos of the large negative voltage
keying line) so you don't have to put up with much of my dodgy hand
sending anymore.  I decided not to bother doing much S&P and just sit on
a frequency at a leisurely 16wpm and see who came - the theory was that
all you big guns would get desperate for a new one towards the end and
come and find me, hmmm not too succesful in practice!  

The start seemed very slow from up here, with large areas of empty
space and after about 45 mins I wandered off for a cup of tea  and a
snack.  The last two hours were significantly better signal wise,
although I think conditions weren't as good as some times.  Dave G3YMC
is my propogation beacon (and you didn't even know! :-) and was weaker
than often, I needed a repeat because of the qsb.  QSB at times was very
rapid and choppy even to the extent of breaking up characters.

My 830 only has variable bandwidth down to about 500hz so I've now
added a variable bandwidth audio filter which has made a miraculous
difference.  Trouble was on my narrowest I realised I had some people
calling outside the passband!  

G3SJJ takes the prize for giving me the biggest fright when he called -
how are you soooo loud!!  I needed a repeat from you because my ears
maxed out.  (This is in contrast to most of the other repeats I asked
for because my brain was maxed out).

The station is very simple -  a Ts830 with about 100w in an outdoor
shed directly feeding an inverted L long wire, well really a sort of 1/4
wave end fed V.  I was surprised to find that I can get a bit of wire to
match 1:1 to the 830 without the ATU but this one does, I've also got a
straight match for 160 as well with the 'other half' added to the end. 
Probably not 50 ohm but that's the beauty of an old rig with a pi tank!

So there we have it, 104 with about 4 dupes (I assume people running
paper logs - but surely you remember you've already worked the only GM8
around?), I suppose I could have done some more if I had done more
S&Ping but as I'm not in a society, affiliated or otherwise, I can't
enter so didn't bother too much!

Cheers
Andy
gm8oeg
Dundee