[UK-CONTEST] NFD GW0AAA/P

[Ian Pritchard]

Hiya Guys
   
  Well, that was great fun.  Moving away from the denser populated parts of the UK is a FD gamble because you miss out on HF ground wave QSOs. But finding new sites is fun.  So once again we continued our tradition of travelling around the UK. This time we headed west, crossed the Severn Bridge, took the first turning left (off the M4) and set up camp at the edge of the Bristol Channel.  Our site was at the edge of a dairy farm and the farmer kindly agreed to keep his cows away from us for the weekend.  The thought of cows getting tangled in guy ropes didn't really appeal to us.  .
   
  It's difficult to judge conditions and performance when you operate from a different site each year, but overall conditions seemed distinctly flat.  We found a bit of 28MHz propagation at the beginning of the contest, but it wasn't the loud sporadic E stuff one would hope for.
   
  Our location seemed a good one, (it's difficult to beat a seaside location.) and we seemed to be getting out pretty well.  Nice to be called by VP8NO.
  The only disappointment was at nightfall when we switched to 160M.   Background noise was running at over S9.  We never really pinned down the source but we were less than a mile south of Llanwern Steel Works together with some 400kV power lines. We still managed to make around 140 top band QSOs, but the rate plummeted for a few hours.. During daylight on the Sunday we were able to catch up a little and overall, by the end of the 24Hrs we had racked up over 1200 (gross) contacts.
   
  As usual we entered the resticted section. The operators were Roger G3SXW. Nigel G3TXF,  Steve GW4BLE and me G3WVG.  We operated from a van using an FT1000MP (100W version) and a 270ft top doublet with open wire feeders and an auto-atu..  One leg suspended between two 10M poles and the other leg going down to ground level
   
  The link below shows some pictures.
  http://www.g0aaa.com/GW0AAA-Jun07/GW0AAA-CW-07.html
   
  Highlights ..Good weather, good company.
  Lowlights... Probably not winning!
   
  73 Ian G3WVG  ...obo Three A's Contest Group. GW0AAA/P