[UK-CONTEST] 80m club contest series results

[Nick G4IRX]

Hi,

Have to agree that the 80m Club Championships particularly ought to have 
more publicity in RadCom. Timing is good, due to work commitments, I 
find if difficult to get on the air at weekends so varying weekday 
evenings are certainly more convenient.

My local club decided they were going to participate and I was persuaded 
to go along to "help out" with one of the CW and the Data sessions. 
Having done very little HF contesting for the past 20++ years I was a 
bit overwhelmed with it all initially. The biggest change I discovered 
was finding everything seems to be "PC driven", with new buzz words like 
"run" and "S&P". Logging needs to be done in real-time rather than 
post-contest.

For CW we started with a hand key in the early sessions, progressing to 
a Logikey K-3, then finally ending up  using SD in real-time. Data modes 
were more varied, Digipan and MixW featured in the earier sessions, for 
the last one we almost managed to get N1MM working with MMTTY/MMVARI 
(must have more macros done for next year!). SSB fairly straightforward 
with SD used in real-time.

Well at least our end results show progress. We managed to drag 
ourselves up from the bottom of the tables and in the July sessions we 
managed 49 and 28th  places for CW/SSB respectively.  Not satisfied with 
that, we had a go at the Low Power Field day, and were pleasantly 
surprised to manage 3rd in the 10W fixed section. I think I've found 
some of my old enthusiam again... I certainly enjoyed the CW sessions.

73
Nick G4IRX, op G5RR (Hucknall Rolls-Royce ARC).