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

Tue Dec 2 07:55:22 EST 2008

Jiri you have hit the nail on the head with the cluster. On Friday before the contest HC5T was spotted by a DL station so I thought I will have a listen and try to work him - I guess I was just in here bored with being off work - so I turned the beam and a very weak signal on there. I listened and it turned out to be 5C5T, but it was then spotted again as HC5T so I kept listening just in case there was a HC5 on the frequency. Nil heard so worked 5C5T and spotted correctly with the comment learn to listen or the like. Someone then sent a spot using my call to me saying learn to respect. This completely put me off for the whole weekend.

I made 11 contacts, and one of them took 10 attempts to complete due to some russian kept calling over the Canadian I was trying to complete with. The hobby has just degenerated into a free for all, I cannot remember in the whole of my 20 plus years of being licenced or the period before when the standards of operating have been so bad. And for all those who say it is the CBers and 11M ops joining the ranks I will disagree as I used to be one and so did many of my friends who are excellent operators and agree with the statements made. 

It has now come to the point where I am about to advertise my kit and just do the club stations for the CQWW and other activities with the Strumbe Head group as the social side far out weighs the on air pleasure, or lack of it. 

Sorry for spouting and it is an old topic, but this past weekend has just shown how low it has dropped and how much the average ham has become a cluster 'tart' (for want of a better word).

Chris Colclough
G1VDP
www.g1vdp.com
www.mc0shl.com

Tel: 024 7673 5940
Mob: 07505 359709
QTHR

--- On Tue, 2/12/08, Jiri Culak <Jiri.Culak at lwss.co.uk> wrote:

From: Jiri Culak <Jiri.Culak at lwss.co.uk>
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] CQWW CW, discipline etc...
To: g3wvg at btinternet.com, "uk-contest" <uk-contest at contesting.com>
Date: Tuesday, 2 December, 2008, 12:19 PM

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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