[UK-CONTEST] ARRL 10m

[Steve Reed]

My experience was slightly different, but on a similar theme.  I could go on
at length about the propagation opportunities presented by 10m at the bottom
of the solar cycle, but no amount of enthusiastic window dressing on my part
would be able to hide the fact that conditions were abysmal!

My excuses first: high noise from power lines when it rained caused me grief
again. Impossible to say what was lost, of course, but the noise swamped
weak signals from the east for several hours at a time.  Also the beam
twisted loose on the stub mast early on Saturday.  Wound the tower down,
tightened the bolts and wound up again, all in less than perfect weather -
but the time-out for this fix paid dividends later.

Clive is right - most of the propagation was (meteor) scatter and patchy
sporadic E.  I am not too far south (and east) of GW3NJW but propagation
patterns here were quite different. I had virtually nothing from Scandinavia
and N Europe - few bursts from OH (not worked), one weak OZ, one missed SP,
and DLs were mostly difficult to work.  Not a peep from 9A but lots of S5
and I stations and a couple of YUs.  I had several 'good' Es openings, best
of which was to the south-east at 1700-1730 on Sunday, though by then
activity levels had dropped too low for the opening to contribute many Qs.
There was also some Es to EA and CT.  

The DX available also depended very much on station locality.  I worked via
F2 (maybe Es first hop) to ZS and V5 (openings heard several times over the
weekend, late morning through to early afternoon) and to PY (half a dozen
stations on Sunday evening - but zero from LU), and via multi-hop Es at 17z
on Saturday to N America - very weak and fleeting but I worked into Maryland
and Texas.  Best dx signal heard, but regrettably not worked despite yelling
myself silly, was XE2WWW.

There was some "good" propagation - via troposcatter.  I worked G0SXC in
Lancashire at a distance of 270 km, which wouldn't rate a second glance on
VHF but is quite reasonable at 28MHz.  Admittedly G0SXC does have a monster
beam, but most of G, GW, GU and GJ was technically within range of my QTH.
Needless to say I only worked 24 G/GW stations (l9 giving me serial number
001), which says something about participation rather than propagation.  In
this contest at the trough of the solar cycle before last I put 100 G's into
the log using low power and a vertical, a significant contribution to the
score that's sadly missed.

CONTEST:       ARRL-10
CALLSIGN:      G0AEV
CATEGORY:      SINGLE-OP 10M HIGH SSB
CLAIMED-SCORE: 2788

Valid QSOs:	   82
Mults:   	   17

Steve, G0AEV

-----Original Message-----
From: uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Clive Whelan
Sent: 10 December 2007 11:08
To: UK Contest Reflector
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] ARRL 10m

Well, I guess we can all agree that it was pretty much a non-event!

However, I think that in some ways it is more interesting than when 
conditions are good. Unless I am in denial, it seems that most Eu 
stations struggled. My own situation was compounded by the fact that  
the antenna was cranked down to 15ft because of the ( forecast) winds, 
and was therefore fixed to the East, and so I made only 25 QSOs in 11 
countries. I do confess however that I spent more time eating and 
watching soccer on TV ( not necessarily simultaneously!) than I did 
operating, since my hair shirt was in the laundry.

A quick review of 3830 postings would suggest that on the other side of 
the pond, they did at least get some genuine Es propagation, and even 
perhaps some F layer on the North/South path. However I made only one 
genuine Es QSO, and that was with DL1IAO who was strong. The rest of the 
Eu QSOs seemed to be a mixture of scatter and Es, sharing the worst 
attributes of both, viz seriously weak with intense QSB. I suspect that 
there was some side scatter, since I worked a number of OH stations as 
well as SM and OZ. Paradoxically, I worked just a single 9A staion, a 
couple of Fs, and didn't even hear  an Italian station at all . Combined 
with the above, that might indicate that the incipient Es "cloud" was 
located over Northern Europe. Somewhat to the contrary, OL5M was the 
most consistent signal over the duration of the contest, but couldn't 
hear me until his own signal rose above S6 ( which in those conditions 
is a massive signal!).


Did anyone from the UK work outside Europe, or have any contrary 
experience of propagation?


73



Clive
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