[UK-CONTEST] Fw: P3J BERU 2006

[Alan Jubb - 5B4AHJ]

Originally sent yesterday, but bounced due to size. I have now removed the 
formatting, so hopefully it will be OK this time.
Also, originally written before I had seen Brian 5B/G4ODV's post.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Alan Jubb - 5B4AHJ
To: UK Contest Reflector
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2006 10:31 AM
Subject: P3J BERU 2006


Hi all.

Interesting contest from a number of angles.

This year, thanks  to Bob, 5B4AGN, I was able to operate from his 
super-station, whereas last year I operated from my "little pistol" station. 
( I have since moved QTH and don't yet have any decent antennas at the new 
QTH, hence Bob's kind offer)

I also put in a lot of time studying propagation charts (which I didn't do 
last year), and composed an operating plan based on this.

I also resolved to spend more time trawling for bonuses, as my notes for 
last year indicated that that was an area that I could improve on.

As a result of these three factors I expected to beat last year's score out 
of sight, but it was not to be. Here are the comparative results:

2005 - figures from the published results, 6th place, Open section.
====
              80m     40m     20m     15m     10m      Total
QSOs    63         191      247      178     49          728
Bonus    15           43        50        35     19           162
Score                                                                 6809



2006, Open section
====

These figures are the tweaked scores from WL. Tweaking required as WL still 
scores 9M6 and 2E as 0 points, and this year counted VAn and VEn as separate 
bonusses.

             80m     40m     20m     15m     10m     Total
QSOs      50     283      280      139          4      749
 Bonus     11        49       55        15          4       134
Score                                                               6475


So what went wrong?

1. Power line noise
Bob warned me that his QTH sometimes suffers from QRN from nearby HV 
overhead power lines.
Indeed, in the first few hours of the contest this noise definitely slowed 
things down, as I had to ask for numerous repeats of serial numbers, and am 
sure that I missed some weak signals. This mainly affected 15m and 20m, and 
possibly 10m. Thankfully the noise went away late afternoon on Saturday, but 
it did re-appear around 09:15z for a short time, just before the end of the 
contest, on Sunday morning. This again slowed things down as I was having a 
niced run of Gs on 15m at the time.

2. Propagation
Where the bands were in reasonable shape (20m and 40m) my results, as 
anticipated, were better than last year.
However, 10m was virtually dead. My first 4 QSOs of the contest (7Q, 9J, VU, 
ZC4) were all I had on the band. This was inspite of frequent CQs with the 
beam pointed at G and also Africa, and also two G's moving me to 10m to try 
for a QSO, but without success. Having said that, I noted from G3LET's 
comments that he worked Brian 5B/G4ODV on the band, so I certainly missed 
out somehow. It will be interesting to see what else Brian worked on 10m.

15m was in relatively poor shape. The long path opening to VK/ZL on Sunday 
morning was very weak. All but one of the LP QSOs to VK/ZL on this band 
resulted in me moving the VK/ZLs from 20m. On the plus side, in the last 
hour of the contest saw collossal G signals, and I was able to run at high 
rate for a while (until the QRN returned), which at least enabled last 
year's QSO total to be exceeded, which had looked unlikely a couple of hours 
earlier.

80m was poor. After a CQ I could hear many stations calling, presumably Gs, 
but there were so many weak signals  that all I could hear was a mush. S&P 
produced better results. The inability to pull these stations out of the 
noise is probably down to my inexperience. This was a band where I had 
expected to do much better than from my own station, as last year I only had 
a low 80m inverted vee slung up temporarily for the contest.

40m and 20m were where the bulk of the QSOs were to be had, although even 
there I missed some bonusses. African stations were scarce, where were the 
ZS stations? There were quite a few around last year but I didn't work a 
single ZS this year.

3. Sleep patterns
Unusually, I had had poor sleep pattern the few nights before the contest, 
culminating in very little sleep Friday night. This certainly didn't help 
the concentration when the going was so painfully slow overnight, and I did 
nod off for a while. I think that George's (5B4AGC) decision to operate in 
the Restricted section was very wise. I expect he achieved a similar score 
to mine and got a decent night's sleep!

4. Operator experience
Same operator both times (obviously), but I wonder whether I was able to 
take full advantage of Bob's very fine station, which was a pleasure to 
operate from. Bob's station is set up for SO2R, which I had a dabble with 
when things were slow. Worked Bob 9H3JT on 80m on the second radio, and 
realised afterwards that I was only running 30w as the amp was not in 
'operate' mode! However, I think SO2R may have been more of a diversion than 
a benefit in this case. I need some practice with it.

5. Overall feelings
- It was great to operate from a high class station, and many thanks to Bob 
for allowing that. On the rare occasions that there was a significant run I 
was able to achieve higher rates than I ever have from my own station.
- Disappointment at the score. I still need to work hard on my bonus rate, 
something which I say after every contest!
- I enjoy this contest immensly inspite of the tedious going overnight.
- It will be interesting to see the scores achieved by the other 5B 
stations. That will be telling!
- I had an unusually high number of callers who were dupes this year. I even 
had a ZL move me from 20 to 40, only to find we'd already worked on 40!.
- Thanks to all for the QSOs, and see you next year.

BTW, I've been asked why I use P3J and not 5B4AHJ, in this 'gentleman's' 
contest. The main reason that I get so many people reading my call as 
5B4ASJ, and also HB4 (although the latter wouldn't happen in BERU.)

BTW2, VU2NXM and VU2UR both sent HQ on some but not all of their exchanges. 
Are they HQ stations? Did anyone else experience this?

73
Alan 5B4AHJ, P3J