[UK-CONTEST] Club Calls - GJ3DVC

[Phil GJ4CBQ]

Steve, M0BPQ wrote:

> PPS I gave a QRA locator to one person as part of the exchange by 
> mistake, sorry if the reader subscribes here.

Steve, assuming that there wasn't anybody else giving out QRA locators
then I was that person!  It didn't cause any gnashing of teeth here,
just mild amusement - I copied the QRA perfectly, but was keeping my
fingers crossed that the required information wasn't about to be buried 
under a barrage of QRN/QRM.  Anyway, I'm not one to judge; I contributed 
my own selection of comedy operating moments over the course of the 
evening!  Many thanks for calling, just the same.

This contest is very much what you make of it - there's room for all. 
You just have to accept that there are some participants would not be 
particularly welcome in your CQWW team! Considering that many stations 
have complained about a 'light' final hour, working the slower ops 
probably had no detrimental effect on final scores.

In previous years I've tried to involve as many club members as
possible, especially new licensees, even though the hit on QSO rate was
considerable!  I got over the problem of report inconsistency by 
generating a set of log sheets in Excel.  These contained a complete set 
of 'sent' RS+serial numbers, tick boxes for 'member' and 'club', the 
club callsign in phonetics as the footer and the preferred contest 
exchange as the header.

This worked a treat with the M3's, but some of the older ops just 
couldn't resist giving out 'Jersey Club' instead of 'Jersey Amateur 
Radio Society'!



This year there were no takers from the club, so, single-op it was, 
including aerial rigging.  In order to get the Topband dipole up to a 
suitable height I had to climb a tree a number of times, fight through 
100ft+ of head-high gorse and brambles a similar number of times, as 
well as setting up a 30ft mast on the club roof in the teeth of what 
seemed like a gale.  Contests certainly keep you fit!

1) I managed to get a run frequency just five minutes before the start 
and suffered very little in the way of QRM for the majority of the contest.

2) My main problem was static, which for 50% of the time was peaking 
over S9.  Did anyone else suffer from this?

3) I felt I was making heavy weather of pulling some of the weaker 
stations out of the noise, but Dave G3YXM later reported that I was 
managing to work stuff that many of the leading stations were failing to 
hear.  Did conditions go a bit 'long skip' for a while?  This has worked 
to my advantage before during the wintertime 80m CC events.

Rig: FT1000, Heil HC5 bodged into a Beyer headset, Datong RF processor 
(please don't ask - it sounded how I wanted it to!)

Aerial: Half-wave dipole at 70 feet.

Total QSOs = 156 (not checked over yet)

1st hour: 80
2nd hour: 43
3rd hour: 33

I don't think I worked any dupes.  I gather that it may be the highest 
QSO tally in the contest, but I fear that I didn't work enough club 
stations to secure a win.


73, Phil GJ4CBQ.



PS.  My son Chris, MJ3KBQ (aged 14) and wife Jan MJ3JBQ (aged xx) made 
appearances on the band from home.  They coped just fine with exchanging 
  club information.  In fact Jan commented that she could type the info 
faster than she could write it.  She might just have talked herself into 
a logging job for next year!

PPS. Why didn't Chris work me?!!


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