[UK-CONTEST] CQWW CW (long post)

[brian coyne]

Some good stuff on here in the last couple of days and lots of congrats are in order.

Peter (LET), that's a really great effort. I am amazed to learn that it is 45 years since you did this one, how did you manage to stay away?

Don (G5W), commiserations, these things come about in seven year cycles, so you got six clear ones to come - great score on 20mtrs though.

Dave (J88), there are worse places to be stranded - how about OX land?  Despite your late start that's a good score.

Andy (M6T). what a truly awesome score for a multi single transmitter. It would be great if one of your gang could put something together for the cdxc mag with detail of the logistics of how you did it, station equipment, operator shifts, duties etc. Must have been super planning to launch such a 'commando raid' which will have taken europe by surprise. We are in admiration of this operation.

Confession, although I spent 28 hours doing a single band on 20mtrs, I think with the exception of G5W, I didn't even hear, let alone work any of you who have reported so far. Almost true anyway as I did hear the OX boys for 10 minutes on Sunday afternoon. Good signal too, solid S7, but they were wkg only USA, mainly west coast, funny thing propogation as they just disappeared as though the lights had been switched off, maybe they qsy'd, anyway no zone 40 for me.

I have a tiny plot here, surrounded by other houses and concrete and I can't do anything effective with low bands but do have a wind up mast and TH3jnr yagi so hf is the only real option. Last year I did a 20mtr single band, it was a semi serious effort with a lot of time outs as I had no great expectations. I was pleasantly surprised to obtain a certificate for 2nd place Asia with 350k pts. When I studied the results in detail I found that No 1 place was only 5k pts ahead.

That fired me up to go for first place this year. I set a target of 500k pts and in the event gave it my best shot but didn't make it, finishing with 444k pts.
Band conditions were definitely down on last year, plus the fact that over the weekend there was 3/4 hours less operating time due to band closure.
Although I made more than 200 extra q's comparison with last years log also shows mults down with 35z /105 countries (140) compared with 34z / 116 c (150) last year.

Europe, although on the doorstep, was very difficult. It seemed as though the muf was rising and falling, a bit like the 10mtr effect. I would work 3/4 stns per minute for 3/4 minutes then nothing at all for 2/3 minutes. Western eu was particularly difficult with relatively few 'G', 'F' 'E' 'PA' etc in the log.
Usually from here Carib stns are a doddle and bankers for a lot of mults, but this year beaming due west or east was non productive, the few that I did get were a struggle. Likewise southeast asia to the east yielded very little compared to the norm. In short it was hard work but OTOH signals from diagonal directions from JA and USA were very strong, in fact I have never heard W7's so loud.

Zones not worked z1, z2, (never hear them anyway here) z6, (nothing heard) z34 (do we ever?, maybe as we are so close they are in the 'skip' zone, it would be nice to see an operation from the south of Egypt),  z40 (as above).

Summary 1212 qso's. 35z, 105c, Total pts 444k.

Finally, if you have got this far, I was also annoyed by the pileup behaviour om mlts and blamed the cluster. very pleased to see others with the same view. Many will not agree but I feel the cluster has no place in a competetive environment. Without it scores would decrease, but does that really matter, is it important to see scores increasing year on year? it would still be a level playing field and winning criteria based upon skill of ops or spotters searching.These increases we see are only due to developing technology with less and less operator skills. No chance of course of getting it closed down for the weekend but it would be nice. Of course guys would replace it with 'Skimmers', which AFAIAA would be undetectable, although I have never seen it perhaps it would not be able to read a dx c/s through a pile up or is that wishful thinking?

Hope you all enjoyed the weekend as much as I did.

73  Brian   5B4AIZ.