[UK-CONTEST] NFD

[Callum M0MCX]

>>>I would never think of using any other contesting program

Never say never :)

By the way - is the length of a doublet critical? My new ATU tunes anything
so why exactly 264 feet..?

Callum McCormick
M0MCX
07976 631881
http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/
 

-----Original Message-----
From: uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of peter Jackson
Sent: 07 June 2007 23:15
To: uk contesting
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] NFD

Hi, there seems to be a lack of NFD reports this year, maybe everyone is
still recovering. So here is a report of the Scunthorpe Steel ARC G4FUH/P.
This year due to lack of manpower we entered the restricted section, BTW who
the devil organised "Train the Trainers" at Finningley radio club in
Sandtoft on the first day of NFD? this robbed us of two of our helpers.
The weather was fantastic, temperature in the caravan reached 29c on
Saturday. I feel sorry for the Irish lads as we had that weather the
previous weekend when we provided the communications for a local Triathlon,
what a difference a week can make.
Sporadic E was way down on last years with only 41 Q's on 10M these were
worked in the first hour and despite frequent visits and sending a few cq's
we didn't work any more.
Our antenna was 264ft doublet 60 ft of which was horizontal at 10M with the
ends sloping down to the ground running East West, fed with open wire
feeders and tuned with an auto ATU built by Les G4OGB from a design in
Radcom. This worked brilliantly, press the bandchange on the rig one tap on
the key and you are ready to go. This enabled us to make many more band
changes than we normally would have done, and it certainly improved our
score.
The caravan was given to us by one of our members Dave M0NEY and Stan G3RRL
made us an operating table at one end. The van has a cooker and fridge, it
was like operating from home!
We like to make NFD into a social occasion for all the club members. Tom
G4JRY supplies all the food, beefburgers on the first day and fish and chips
from the chippy Saturday evening. Breakfast on Sunday morning is a full
English AH the smell of sizzling burgers sausage bacon and eggs wafting
through the cool early morning air makes the saliva glands run. His wife
cooks Goulash for Sunday lunch and we have a choice of red or white wines,
not the posh stuff that Chris G3SJJ drinks, sorry Chris couldn't help that!
it comes from the supermarket.
You might think after all that we don't treat NFD seriously but we do, but
with only three ops it's hard work with two of us well into our 70's. 
We made 904 Q's which to us ain't bad. Best DX VK8AV on 40M Saturday
afternoon. No real problems except for a bit of rf getting into the system
on 20M which sometimes, after sending /P it sent a train of P's.
SD worked fine as usual I would never think of using any other contesting
program.
I enjoy working the night shift, I feel tired up to 2.00am then get a second
wind, but oh boy do I sleep well Sunday night, sleep like a log wake up in
the fireplace, ( apologies to Tommy Cooper)
73 Pete G3KNU
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