[UK-CONTEST] AFS - SSB

[David Gould]

A most enjoyable contest,  so much more fun than the CW leg!!!  and I 
did not have to ask anyone to QRS!!

I have had to give up my remote/contest site (farm has been sold) so 
have had to revert back to operating from home with a miniscule 
garden and lots of background noise.  I don't know whether it was 
because I was a weaker signal but I did not suffer from the 
deliberate QRM this year and managed to hold my run frequency for 
three hours.  I thought I was doing really well until in the last 
hour when I started working all the "big" stations..   There were 
some fantastic scores by these stations - well done.  I worked 275 (I 
guess about 265 good) which would have been quite near the top a few 
years ago, but not this year as everyone else has improved even more. 
My main problem was the background noise and not being able to hear 
the weaker stations, I only worked a few Europeans.

I had one major "fright" during the contest,  I was using a new 
amplifier (SPE Expert 1K-FA) and about halfway through there was this 
almighty "BANG" which made me jump... I thought for a moment it was 
the amp blowing up, but fortunately not, it was a pigeon flying into 
the shack window - two feet from my right ear.  Actually I must go 
and remove the body from the flat roof...

I didn't work G3CWI either...  Challenge for next year is to be able 
to run on the main vfo and S&P on the sub vfo at the same time.  I 
have done it a few times before but need some more practice.

73,
Dave