[UK-CONTEST] LZ Open

[Peter Hobbs]

I thought I'd have a look at this eastern european version of ROPOCO, with extras (0400 - 1200 today on 80 and 40).  The extras being that no great number of entrants are anticipated and so you are allowed to work everyone every half hour, in order to keep yourself amused.  As well as a fully correct exchange, both stations must have logged the same time to within 3 minutes for the QSO to count.   Now all this is quite a challenge for a hand logger - how do you keep a running dupe sheet and update it every minute or so?  I looked at SD and UA1AAF which are both recommended on the LZ Open site.  SD does a workmanlike job but will only give you a yes/no dupe signal once you've keyed in a call.  UA1AAF on the other hand highlights all the stations you've worked in the last half hour so you can see people drop off the end when it updates (every minute).  His logger has selectable K1EA and CT styles and has provided full ESM as standard for many years.  He provides specific loggers for some contests, including RDXC, ARI and a few more, but there is no selection available as in SD - each version is stand-alone.  I actually used the ARI version for the Jubilee because of the ESM feature, frigged the mult file and scored the entry afterwards.

So I gave UA1AAF another outing this morning but discovered a bug (or is it a feature?) that makes you send the wrong part of a received exchange after your own serial, every time you've edited  the previous QSO.  As this tends to happen rather frequently at G3LET, I soon reverted to hand keying with an eye on what the exchange should actually be rather than the logger display.

LZ Open is a relaxed and friendly affair, far removed from the usual rapid-fire east EU events and with a ROPOCO feel to it.  There's quite a good contingent of QRPers as well.  You do actually have to get up at 4AM though, as things go steadily downhill from then on in terms of stations to work and signal strengths.  It turned out to be extremely good practice in copying a long serial under weak signal conditions with rapid fading.  Callsigns are less of a problem of course because you've worked most people before.  By midday of course there's not a lot left, but UA3, 4, 6 and TA were still workable at a push.  Very few other Gs seemed to be giving it a go.  There are no awards of any consequence and to end up with a certificate (top 3) from G would not be easy, with the centre of gravity so far to the east.  The main interest is probably the "honour roll" in the results, which lists all entrants in the order of the proportion of "good" QSOs in their logs.  In some cases in the past this has been as low as 30%!  One major problem in this area is calls from non-entrants who think you should be satisfied with a 3 digit serial.  But of course that's not good enough, you must be able to log the full six digits or it's adjudicated as a duff QSO.

Would I do it again?  There's something strangely quirky about it that's rather appealing, so I might. 

73. Peter G3LET