[UK-CONTEST] GM0F WPX CW

[Cooper, Stewart]

Nice write-up from Gerry at G6PZ. I cannot say I had a good time unfortunately. I slept Friday night, ran throughout Saturday until 0300 Sunday then slept again for 3.5 hours. But by 0900 Sunday I was a total and utter wreck, falling asleep at the key, and incapable of operating the radio or reading CW - the callsign F/G3BJM really confused me! Twice! Dohh. I really wish I could sort this out. A work colleague told me it sounded like golf - you play an awful game and get to the 17th with a bad score - do you finish with a bad score (upset your handicap) or walk away (upset your ego). I decided to walk away at about 1830z - and it's not easy to do. I did 23 hours total.

 BAND   QSO DUP  PFX  POINTS
-----------------------------
  160     0   0    0       0
   80    75   0   13     186
   40   384   1  116    1183
   20   993  20  417    1484
   15   421   7   82     473
   10    65   1   24      77
-----------------------------
TOTAL  1938  29  652    3403
=============================
   TOTAL SCORE : 2 218 756

It was nice to hear stuff on 10m. 15m was open with little or no US heard (other than the big guys) and 20m on Sunday required a special type of ear to hear the US stations calling me, but they were far away. So as usual a large QSO total of Eu stuff and poor points per QSO. 64 QSOs were made on the 2nd radio. I had some serious problems with the radio overloading due to strong and nasty signals. Now, I have never had this before, so is it a function of more crap being transmitted (esp on 20m) or has something changed in the radio? With the IPO on and 18db of attenuation some sigs were still crunching. This was when I was within 1 khz of loud stations but in particular ES5Q, S50R and UA6LV who was actually transmitting two signals that I could hear. Now were these only appearing within my radio...? And as for the key clicks... I wish I'd not done the mod now - that way I might clear a bit of space around me.
Wish I'd been able to hack it - wish I'd been somewhere else though!
73
Stewart
GM4AFF/GM0F

FWIW...
Why do two stations always call exactly together after 5 minutes of silence right on top of each other and strangely both seem to contain the requested parts of call that you request, three times in a row.
Why do some stations feel it necessary when sending slowly, to repeat all calls twice along with the full CW 9's (DA DA DA DA DIT). It's the CW equivalent of the pub bore "I didn't get where I am today by sending fast CW... blah blah".
Why do very weak QRP stations feel it necessary to append /QRP to their already long and complicated 6 letter callsign especially when you're asking them to repeat the callsign for the 3rd time. Don't they get it??? Oh, sorry, they can hear me OK. I see.




----------------------------------------------------------------
   
Offshore Design Ltd
Buchanan House
63 Summer Street
Aberdeen
AB10 1SJ
Registered in Scotland No SC 63080
Registered Office: John Wood House
Greenwell Road, Aberdeen, AB12 3AX
VAT No 296 6488 90

www.odl.co.uk
   
This email is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential
and privileged information. You should not disclose its contents to any other person. Any
unauthorised review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the
intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately.