[UK-CONTEST] CQWW

[Danny Higgins]

This year I decided to have a bit of a go to try out the "new" station 
under contest conditions.  I was cutting things a bit fine - I only had 
the first QSO with the rig the week before, and on the Friday morning I 
had no antennas up and the contest logging software wasn't working.  I 
abandonned any hope of getting SD to work (CW keying was erratic and 
slow) and downloaded N1MM.  It worked straight away, but it was all new 
to me.  I had a quick look at the manual (405 pages!) and configured it 
for the minimum I needed for CQWW.  I was very impressed with the ESM 
(Enter Sends Message) function.

I decided that it would be best to stick to one band and 40M offered the 
best chance of DX with a dipole at 35 feet.  I stayed up all night on 
the Friday doing S&P and looking mainly for multipliers.  I had a social 
break in the morning and then a few more hours on the key in the 
afternoon and evening.  I eventually got to bed at 22:30 and I was not 
inclined to move from the horizontally polarised position to the 
vertically polarised position too early on Sunday.  I operated Sunday 
from afternoon until the end of the contest.  My first target was 100 
countries, which I passed at Sunday lunchtime.  I then tried working 
everything I could find to make 400 QSOs and 100,000 points, which I 
managed around 23:30.  The final tally was 408 QSOs, 109 countries, 29 
zones and 101,700 points.  I got one new DXCC (FJ) and 12 new bands 
slots for 40M CW.

Equipment:  Racal RA3702 dual HF RX, MA3752/TA3762 solid state 250W TX 
with homebrew SO2R controller

Antenna: 40M dipole up 35 feet

Danny, G3XVR