[UK-CONTEST] G4TSH - STEW PERRY TBDC

[Justin Snow]

My first attempt at this event and thoroughly enjoyed it.
My plans for Xmas were thrown into disarray when I cam down with the
dreaded lurgy on Christmas Day. So visits to relatives were off!  That
said cranking a 100 ft tower up in the freezing Suffolk countryside was
probably not the most sensible thing to do either, but you have to be
mad to enjoy 160m don't you?

I decided to get on at around 17:30 and go through to 07:30 next morning
for my 14 hours, first QSO was with G3BJ.
Things started well with a good selection of EU and DX to the East.  The
JA's were in good form and by their sun up I had put 52 of them in the
log.  Conditions to NA were somewhat poorer than I had hoped and signals
were not anything like as strong as expected with much QSB later in the
night destroying a number of potential QSO's  When it got really slow I
would take a look around the band and found a number of QSO's and DX
this way.  It was fun to make the QSO with CE1 while a rabble of EU
stations continued to call and not listen to what was going on.  The OA4
was almost as easy, but I could not hear him with everyone else calling,
so it was a case of dumping my call in twice and then wait for about a
minute for everyone else to shut up.  At which point he came back to my
call!  ODX was VK6VZ.  The session was rounded off with a call from
KH6AT just before 07:30.

Final numbers come out at 596 QSO's, 300 Grids and 4733 points, though
Clive GM3POI has certainly beaten that!

Antenna system was a 33m top loaded vertical and 80m 4sq or K9AY for
receive.  Still some work to do on this system and am hoping for better
results in the future.  Any reports on what my signal sounded like in
comparison with others would be welcome.

Thanks to Bob, G4BAH for letting me loose on the station.  Roll on CQ160!

73
Justin, G4TSH