[UK-CONTEST] F/G4PIQ 80m CW CC

[Andy Cook G4PIQ]

83 QSOs.
0 points...

Not found time to do these during the year from home but sneaked the K2 into the car to come on holiday to Normandy.... Spent a couple of hours on Monday stripping some 6 core alarm cable down to individual cores to make an antenna with. Ended up with about 50m end-fed with the middle up 20ft in a tree and the ends just about at head height with a couple of quarter wave radials. Not a very inspiring antenna.....

Contest was interesting. Couldn't run at all at start so after 3 mins of trying went S and P for about 30 mins, then ran a bit, then some more S and P for last 15 mins. All CW sent manually (except CQ from K2 memory keyer), manual dupe sheet kept (must be first time I've done that for 15 years) and logging to Pocket Excel on a PDA. 

Tremendous variation in signal strengths. From memory G3TKF, G3TXF, G4EOF, G3WVG (especially), G4TSH (especially), G4EBK, G0WKW were loud, while G4BUO, GW4BLE, and G3SJJ (especially) were weaker than expected. Chris was so weak I had to ask him to confirm I had his call OK in case I had broken it in a static crash (local thunderstorms). 

Zero points because I broke one of the first rules of contesting and didn't take a backup of the log immediately after the contest ended. When I turned the GPRS radio on in PDA to go and get a Cabrillo template so that I could make up a submittable log, the PDA crashed and I lost the log.... Doh.... Enjoyed the contest at least.

All things being equal hope to be on for SSB leg next week which will be tougher... See you all then.

73,

Andy, G4PIQ