[UK-CONTEST] CQWW: GM3SEK 40m SOSB

[Ian White GM3SEK]

This was a trial run for the 40m 4-square, almost two years in the 
making but only finished on the Thursday afternoon. Well, not quite 
finished yet, but "good enough for contesting".

It was originally intended to be a serious effort, making appropriate 
excuses for missing an American friend's Thanksgiving party on the 
Sunday. But then she and her partner decided to take the opportunity to 
get married, so there went Sunday afternoon - and with it, and all ideas 
of a serious entry. Instead I decided to go SO Assisted and put some of 
the effort into picking up any new countries along the way.

In the first few hours, it seemed quite hard to get anything going. The 
expected NE path into the US seemed seriously skewed towards the south, 
and continental US signals were weaker than I'd hoped for. Maybe all 
their attention at the start of the contest was on the Caribbean, which 
was good for strong signals and multipliers but doesn't produce much 
volume of QSOs. The dawn greyline produced a few JAs and ZLs, but they 
were weak and fading.  It all seemed like hard work, and by mid-morning 
I stopped for a kip with a QSO total that wasn't all that much greater 
than G3YMC's  :-)

Then came Sunday afternoon, with a glorious 3-hour run of LP to zone 3, 
Far East stations and plenty of Europeans to keep the rate at a steady 
120-130 per (which is amazing by my standards). All that backache laying 
radials was paying off after all! Finally lost the frequency when the 
band opened to the US, and K1TTT thought it sounded like a nice quiet 
spot... but that one run had put 335 in the log.

The rest of the contest was the usual mix of S&P, shorter runs, catnaps, 
kiss the bride, the normal sort of thing. Sunday morning greyline 
brought stronger signals than Saturday, but the JA signals had an awful 
bell-like echo that made the dots and dashes run together at contest 
speed... possibly the greyline was open in both directions?

Since this wasn't a competitive effort, I kept going up to 1000 QSOs by 
mid-evening and then pulled the switch. Subject to deciphering a few 
scribbled queries, it ended with 1007 (+ dupes), 117 countries, 33 
zones, and a 4-square that is just about run-in and ready for its first 
service.

New ones for 40 CW, only 3... and one of those was GW (thanks, Steve)! 
I would have found the other two without the Cluster, simply from the 
size of the pileups, but undoubtedly would have missed some other mults. 
However, if I had been seriously contesting, instead of partly DXing and 
going to a wedding, I would definitely have gone strict SO.

Thanks particularly for all the QSOs with G stations.


Rats! Scratch MU0A, so make that 1006/116/33.


-- 

73 from Ian GM3SEK