[UK-CONTEST] Fwd: GB5HQ

[Paul Beecham]

Just a "few" comments from the G6PZ team who operated 15m SSB for GB5HQ 
again this year. I'm sure that all of the other stations that made up the HQ 
team are no different in the amount of effort and commitment etc etc..

On the Friday morning prior to the contest, G6PZ was in the field working on 
antennas at 5am. M0CLW arrived soon after midday, followed shortly after by 
G0OPB and G4MJS - we deliberately spent all day building and erecting a 
homebrew 5el monobander for 15m with its own dedicated tower, to accompany 
the 4el SteppIR and 7el X7 tribanders on their own separate towers. We used 
this as a lower antenna to help us work short skip, maximise the opportunity 
for UK stations to work GB5HQ and we managed to make lots of inter-UK QSOs 
as a result. Believe us, UK stations on 15 metres, SSB, are *not* loud, 
often just at the noise level and often disappearing in QSB. With the QRM, 
with the number of stations calling, it requires patience and skill.

G6PZ recently acquired a WX0B StackMatch so we were able to listen and 
transmit between any combination of the the three antennas, allowing us to 
beam into multiple directions (proved very valuable as 15m was, at times, 
open to NA, UA0/far east and EU etc). To summarise, lots of man hours and 
money was injected into the station to deliberately allow us to put in our 
best performance possible on 15m SSB for GB5HQ.

In spite of spending most of the day in the field working on the antennas, 
we made a point of analysing 15m propagation, and indeed on the Friday 
conditions were very good; we were still hearing States at 2am and we had 
mini pileups after just one or two CQ calls. However, on the Saturday night 
during the contest, the aforementioned propagation was practically 
non-existant and we were repeatedly calling CQ from 1am onwards with very 
little return.

G6PZ is primarily set up for multi-single operation, and thus we have a 
1000MP MkV and a Ten-Tec Orion. We opted to use the MP for our 15m SSB HQ 
slot, and so erected a K9AY for listening on LF on the Orion to try to 
assist spotting stations for the other band/mode operators. During Saturday 
night we also operated on 160m SSB for a period and also 15m CW to support 
the guys on those bands/modes. This was to try and stir up contacts from a 
different QTH because of varying conditions.

By the way Peter (G3LET), you state that "no more than 2 or at most 3 
operators are needed in any band mode for a 24 hour event, assuming dual run 
and mult stations." Although there is some truth in your statement we're not 
sure what you really imply. We had two ops manning the run radio pretty much 
all of the time and this often proved valuable as the ops can support one 
another with hearing the weaker stations - everybody hears things a little 
differently so you can never have too many ops as such, as there can be 
emergency situations. For example, people maybe required to help with an 
antenna problem or winding up a tower etc. On a contest grade station there 
is a lot of engineering and thus increased potential for things to go wrong. 
Also, surely more ops means that people can get sleep, which means fresher 
operators on the air, which means increased concentration/fewer 
mistakes/better UBNs etc etc etc... After all, this is a team event for us 
so why put yourself through the torture of almost single-op when you don't 
have to?

All in all, G6PZ put in loads of effort to get the station in tip-top shape 
for the event. We know how to win contests (we're currently #1 EU 
multi-single winners in CQ WPX CW and have had numerous other #1 results; 
ironically, a certificate arrived for UBA CW and SSB yesterday morning for 
#1 EU) and as a result, we feel we are quite successful; thus we feel 
there's not much more we could have done operating-wise during the event to 
better our score - we worked everything we heard! So, perhaps this is why 
G6PZ was one of the chosen stations to represent the UK in this event - just 
like all the other stations and operators, all of whom are winners in either 
single or multi op.

The conclusion: We did our best, we put in the time and effort just like the 
rest of the team, we worked well as a team with efficient passing of 
stations/mults with a good deal of communication going on between the 
ops/stations and so it was very much a team effort. I think everybody 
deserves to be CONGRATULATED for their efforts and not SLATED. Or is this 
the "British way of doing things" too???

73,
Simon M0CLW & Paul G6PZ