[UK-CONTEST] GW0GEI - CQWW CW.

[Steve Jones]

Late report from me, after a busy week at work. Still havnt had a chance to 
look at the log yet.

The last two years myself and a couple of other local Dragon ARC club 
members here on Anglesey have entered cqww cw in the multi two category, 
since it was created three years ago. We struggle for operators so M2 
enables us to have two run stations for max enjoyment in what has become a 
not too serious affair (partly due to my Challenger III amplifier letting us 
down early on in both contests, requiring major surgery by Paul GW8IZR 
following both contests to try and overcome the inherrent design and cooling 
problems).

After a summer of poor weather, long work hours, and the distraction of a 
possible job and house move, the station here was in a pretty poor state 
after months of neglect. After some initial discussion established that 
Stewart GW0ETF was keen to try out  his new k3 in a big contest, a decision 
was made to committ to getting the station ready for either M2 again (or a 
single op entry by Stewart if I found work committments too heavy in the wek 
before.  There were offers of help from Danny MW0BZR, John MW0BER, and Paul 
GW8IZR to get the station ready again, so work commenced.  A long list of 
tower and antenna work was drawn up and we carried out most of the work in 
the two weekends prior to the contest, in cold but mainly dry weather. 
However, Murphy arrived the night before the contest with two faulty feeders 
due to water penetration, so Danny and myself worked most of the Friday to 
finish the work outside and re arrange the feeders inside into an M2 
configuration.

Station ended up not much better than in previous years:

GW0GEI
Ft1000 (inrad)
Challenger III gs35 (heavily modded)
Hygain 204ba 4 ele mono on 20m @ 50ft on P60 tower
Butternut hf2v 40m/80m vertical

GW0ETF
K3 with newly installed second rx
Acom 1000
Tenndyne T8 8 elel log periodic @ 33ft on tenamast
40m dipole @ 30ft on tenamast
80m dipole @ 50ft on P60
160 dipole @ 40ft  on P80 (lack of time meant it wasnt re wired in time 
after a failure)

We had drawn up a rough bandplan for the weekend and we stauck to it most of 
the time. I kicked off on 40m whilst Stewart started on 160m, with 
reasonable runs on both for most of the night. As we had both had a couple 
of hours lie down earlier in the evening we were both able to run through 
the night. At day break we ran on 160m and 80m, and then I moved back to 40m 
for a while before breakfast whilst Stewart hit 20m. I took a short break 
for breakfast and then carried on running 40m which was really rocking all 
weekend.

When Stewart moved up to 15m and hunting on 10m with the log periodic I 
moved up to 20m with the 4 ele mono yagi. Like Stewart I found 20m hard 
going with no decent runs. I had occasional sessions back on 40m in the 
afternoon with some nice dx signals, and Stewart ran 15m and 20m until we 
both had a break for tea early evening.

The evening was a repeat of the previous one and we carried on til around 
2am when we both took a sleep break, to return for the greyline around 0730. 
Stewart had a good run on 80m to the usa whilst I concentrated on 160m and 
then moved up to 80m and 40m as Stewart moved up to 20m. As on the first day 
40m was rocking with several hours of good rates into eu, usa and ja. 20m 
was similarly poor here, which is a contrast to what it normerly is from 
here. 15m opened up but was still poor and 10m was almost non existant, with 
just the voodoo guys in the log and one local gw all weekend.

All weekend I found the packet pileups hard going - some continually calling 
despite me going back to specific calls, and the dx mult pileups were pretty 
horrendous too. Having said  that I found cracking the 40m pileups easy with 
the vertical on 40m.

Sunday afternoon was a bit of a blur and we both took a longish tea break in 
the evening. We had exceeded our previous score and qso numbers earlier in 
the day but the country mults didnt seem to be coming as fast as last year 
and we ended up with about 30 less countries at the end of the contest 
despite exceeding our targets for qso and zones.

No great score again, but I enjoyed the weekend after doing very little 
contesting over the last year and very little casual operating either. 
Stewart enjoyed using his second rx on the k3 for the first time, having 
installed the second rx 48 hours before the start of the contest. Big thanks 
must go to Paul IZR for all the work on the amplifier and one of the towers; 
to John BER for the antenna and tower winch repairs/maintenance; and 
especially to Danny BZR for his many hours refurbishing the T8 and all day 
Friday trouble shooting and fixing the last minute problems.  I have started 
a major overhaul of the coax feeds this weekend following the last minute 
failures, so that any plans for arrl tests are not by similar problems!

Here is the unchecked score summary, which highlights the poor performance 
on 20m:

CQWWCW Score Summary Sheet

    CallSign Used : GW0GEI
    Operator(s) : GW0GEI, GW0ETF

Operator Category : MULTI-TWO
             Band : ALL
            Power : HIGH
             Mode : CW
 Default Exchange : 14

        Club/Team : Contest Cymru Group/Dragon ARC
         Software : N1MM Logger V8.11.1

        Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty   ZN
         1.8     782     971   57   16
         3.5     790    1205   77   17
           7    1504    2209  108   32
          14     570    1193   78   22
          21     105     236   43   18
          28       2      3    2    2
       Total    3753    5817  365  107


            Score : 2,745,624


73

Steve GW0GEI