[UK-CONTEST] CQWW CW, discipline etc...

Tue Dec 2 07:19:11 EST 2008

Greetings to Nigel and Ian in Greenland and to all of you,

Andy PIQ hit the nail on the head and every time I sat at mult station, I was frustrated and disappointed. European operators are pretty bad and listening to JA and US pile ups makes you wonder what went wrong in EU.
Particular good (bad) one was VR2 on 160m. I could hear them booming in and called few times but it was a bit early. I worked them 30mins later and then they got spotted in cluster. Wall of EU+Asiatic Russians basically wasted opportunity for anyone actually able to hear them. JT1CD on 80 was same and at the end he sent SRI NW QRT and was gone as he could not control the pile up...but still few were still calling because others were calling too and I even hrd some CFM 59915's flying around hihi. 
It really seems like everyone is watching CLX network and jumps on spots, whatever they are. I have checked few spots from RL3A (I can't say if it was them or someone just used their call to do damage) but all of them were fake causing just chaos. Another particularly bad example of behavior  was HG3R on 80m. He works VK4MA and disappears from minute and then gets back and start calling CQ about 100Hz away, making sure no one else from EU works VK4, pretending not to hear QSY sent by hundreds...well, that's how it's being done now apparently. 

It was still great fun and it was very easy to work stuff spotted locally by two spotting posts next shack and that worked extremely well....as soon cluster was involved it was true ZOO. 

Thanks to all at M6T for great weekend and to all for Qs and for good fun.

73
Jiri

>>>

Greetings from Greenland!

Yes it's Tuesday and we're still here. No planes "in or out" due to bad weather.

Sorry to hear that it was a bit chilly in England.  It was a bit chilly here too, daytime temperature of minus 21 C. to be precise.  Not exactly ideal weather for antenna work, especially as the "days" was just 4 hours long. 
Nevertheless we managed to erect a top-band antenna. It was an inverted L, made up of a 60ft tower section and a 70ft wire attached to the top. We were keen to do this because OX is particularly "rare" on 160.

We operated from the "club" station at Kangerslussuaq which is on the West Coast. In reality the club has just two members and only one of them is active. He is Jesper OX3KQ and was exceptionally helpful in every way.  The shack is located in a large hut on a hilltop. It's about a 20 minute drive in a 4x4 from the airport settlement. 

>From the outset we realised we were not going to be able to make a competitive entry from here. Propagation from inside the Arctic Circle is not the most reliable and there were no antennas for 15 or 10.  We just wanted to make as many qsos as possible and have fun. We entered the Multi-Two section so both stations could "run". The 80M antenna was great, it was a full sized vertical with many radials. The 40M antenna was good too, switchable crossed dipole at about 50ft with a perfect hilltop take off. For 20M we had a home built yagi made by Jesper OX3KQ.

At the start of the contest the sky overhead was brightly illuminated by the "northern lights",  Very attractive, but an Aurora was not exactly we wanted, and conditions at the start were poor. Conditons fluctuated suddenly and wildly throughout the 48 hours.  Sometimes the bands would sound very flat and sometimes excellent. 

Band      Q     Z    DXCC
160       712   16   56
80        1192  24   85
40        1374  22   86
20        1701  22   86
15        1     1    1
10        0     0    0
Total    4980   85   314  Score:5,204,556           

Finally I agree totally with Andy's comments re. the cluster. Anytime we got spotted, discipline was really bad. When our siganals were strong it was ok because we could control things , but when we were weak it was difficult. I got the impression that many callers couldn't actually read morse code! 

Did we have fun? Yes, bucket loads of it.   Would we be rushing back to Greenland to do it again? Possibly not.

73 Ian G3WVG and Nigel G3TXF. ...Kangerlusuaaq Airport Cafeteria.   

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