[UK-CONTEST] G3BJ - STEW PERRY TBDC

[Don Beattie]

A brief report on the SP:

Managed to have a half serious try at the SP last night, with mixed success. After an hour or so, I found that the K9AY was misbehaving and took a 30 minute rest period to fix it - corrosion on the feed line entry plug (now fixed) but it caused me initially to have noises on the receive antenna, as the power was not getting to the switching relays properly, and they were not making proper contact. I knew there was something wrong, but had not managed to track it down. There's nothing quite like a contest for showing up the weak spots in an installation.

Conditions didn't seem quite as good as I remember a few years back, but the run to Japan was excellent. Nice to have a JA pile-up for a while ! The US seemed a bit spotty - signals were not huge, but quite usable. No VKs and no ZLs here. Best DX was CE1. A total of 138 North America, and 28 Japan, with a few South Americans as well.

Decided to take an early break around midnight (with 16 hours of darkness, there's a decision to be made on when NOT to operate so as not to exceed the 14 hour limit) and I think I may have got it wrong, as I left a band which was yielding a few US stations, but came back (at 01.30) to a somewhat quieter band.

Apart from the K9AY problem, everything worked, but I suspect Justin will be well ahead of me from the M6T station. Good to hear GM4AFF and GM4YXI on - wonder how the contest felt from the North ?

Interesting that many people (except in the US) are still sending 599 in the contest, despite the rules being quite explicit that the exchange is just the locator.

WinTest says I have 3451 points from 489 good QSOs.

Used the usual stuff here - FT1000MP + linear and 90 ft Titanex and dipole, with K9AY on receive.

73

Don, G3BJ