[UK-CONTEST] 80m CC signals in France

[g3ory at lineone.net]

Guys,

My holiday in the South of France meant that I would miss last week's 
80m CC CW session, so I decided to take my 80m ARDF receiver with me 
and listen to the contest from out there.  The receiver is a TCA440 
superhet with a 4.5kHz IF filter and no AGC or S meter. The lack of AGC 
means that you get a good indication of relative signal strength from 
the level of the audio out.  

At the start of the session both ends of the path were in daylight and 
I could hear a cacophony of UK signals in the contest segment. With the 
ARDF receiver I was only ever going to hear the loudest stations and 
sure enough many of the 'usual suspects' were there with signals at 
about S7 - G3TBK, G4BUO, G3WVG, G3YHV, G3KLH, G3UJE, G3ZVW, G3TXF, 
G0ORH and so on.  One signal stood out above all the rest at about 2 S 
points stronger and that was G3OLB.

I could also hear some stations at about S6 and these included G3PJT, 
G3KNU, G3SHF, G3PDH, G0ADH and G3RXP.

By 2100 BST Montpellier was in darkness but it was still light over 
most of the UK. The S7 signals had advanced to S9 but G3OLB was still 
far and away the strongest G now at S9 plus.

I copied M0PTO and G4ARI in the QRS Corrall at a good S7.

In the UK I get a rather distorted view of relative signal strength 
but I found it interesting to see how stations sounded 700 miles away 
from the home QTH.

73
Bob
G3ORY





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