[UK-CONTEST] G0AEV CQWW SSB report one week on

[Steve Reed]

CQWW SSB report one week on ... it takes me this long to collect my
thoughts.  A 10m single band effort (yes, again) was rewarded with an
interesting mix of propagation, some good runs to Europe, as well as the
inevitable quiet periods and 'operating challenges'. 

I think I've done this contest on 10m about 20 times now, enough anyway to
have a fairly good idea what to expect, but I am always surprised by some
aspect of the band - its one of the things that keeps me in the groove.  At
this time of the year 10m will "always" produce north-south F-layer
propagation, even at solar minimum (days with major magnetic disturbances
excepted).  Its pretty much guaranteed that there will be QSOs into southern
Africa and southern South America, and so it proved.  Africans came in late
morning through to early evening, peaking around 14z.  The South Americans
were a bit late in appearing on Saturday, but South America was available in
patchy openings to 20.30z on both days.  East-west propagation is a
different matter altogether - likely to be difficult (or absent) - and I had
no expectation of working much beyond single hops to zones 17 and 21, maybe
as far north as zone 8 to the west: I certainly didn't foresee 50 QSOs with
W/VE.

The dominant factor for 10 this year was the sporadic E  There's usually
some sporadic E in mid-autumn, and sometimes it's quite good, but this year
Es was particularly extensive.  Single hop Es was responsible for high
European QSO totals (almost 200 DLs in the log), good runs with the rate
meter bumping along between 150 and 200/hr during the hotspots, and the
source of about half of the mults worked.  I also think the Sunday afternoon
opening to W/VE was by sporadic E - it had the right characteristics
including a restricted footprint (mainly VO1-VE1-W1 with an additional hop
to W5).  First W QSO was with KC1XX - very weak signals and a slightly
skewed path - took a couple of minutes to be heard and to complete the
exchange.  I was pretty pleased thinking this could be a one and only zone 5
QSO, only to find the band opening strongly (if locally) 15 minutes later.
Main stateside openings were between 1300 and 1500z, Sunday only.
Propagation to zones 8 and 9 was quite good on both days, with FY5KE heard
first around midday on Saturday, and the last QSO to P40W at 2015 on Sunday.

There wasn't much to be heard in the easterly direction other than a handful
or two of z17 and 21 stations.  I've seen several reports of western
Europeans working B4B on 10m, one at least at an improbably late time of
day.  B4B's claimed score on 3830 shows they made only 12 QSOs on 10m in 7
countries, so it seems that there could have been some callsign spoofing
going on.  However, I can't be sure there wasn't some weird opening to z24
as I had a serious problem listening to the East (and to the SW) due to
local HT power lines producing up to S9 noise when it rained (as it did).
This constituted an 'operating challenge'!  The solution was to listen on a
vertical as the noise from the lines is strongly horizontally polarised.
That worked fine for working stronger Europeans via Es but when it was wet I
was without a gain antenna for finding/working weak signal DX and stuff via
E-backscatter.  Luckily there was no noise to the west and the weekend was
more dry than wet.  I think a vertically polarised array has to be on the
list of future construction projects...   Otherwise most thing worked -
transmit through the vertical locked the PC (which has never happened
before) and I had a broken microphone lead to fix early on Saturday.  An
usual 'challenge' was having to evict a wasp from the shack 3 times - after
re-appearing (via the antenna feeder duct?) for the third time it was
deposited 50m away - it didn't return.

Conditions looked to me like 10m DXCC should have been workable without too
much problem.  I know I missed some easy mults - I never heard a peep from
CN despite the activity, and I missed GI, OH0, HB0, SV from the 'should have
worked easily list'.  I can't blame receive problems entirely - I got sucked
into running nearer Europeans too often and maybe I should have sacrificed
some rate for mults.  Of the DX I called but couldn't raise I remember that
J3A in particular always seemed engrossed in runs to the States.  But nearly
everything else heard was worked - eventually.  1000 Qs, 20 zones, 100
countries from G would have been an achievable target for the conditions. 

Steve G0AEV


CONTEST: CQ-WW-SSB
CALLSIGN: G0AEV
CATEGORY: SINGLE-OP 10M HIGH (UNASSISTED).
CLAIMED SCORE: 130854

FT1000D +FL2277 400w
5 EL MONO YAGI at 65', 1/2L VERT at 30', 1/2L VERT at 0'

VALID QSOS: 914
COUNTRIES: 92
ZONES: 21
POINTS/QSO: 1.27

AF	2.1%
AS	1.3%
EU	85.6%
NA	6.8%
SA	4.4%
OC	0.0%