[UK-CONTEST] NFD - Contest Cumbria

[Ian Fugler G4IIY]

A brief report from the Cumbrian contingent; G3IZD, G3WGV and G4IIY.

It was another enjoyable weekend.  Wx was excellent, not a drop of rain and warm and sunny throughout (well not overnight).

Logging by Starlog, worked flawlessly yet again.

The diesel generator started first time and ran with no hiccups, topped-up every five or six hours.  It used less than 15 litres over 25 hours.

The usual aerial, an 84 foot top, extended to about 260 feet overnight, worked well.  We had RF breakthrough on an external speaker lead on 40m, but that was fixed by a single ferrite.  I sympathise with those who had breakthrough problems.  They can be enormously frustrating, especially when exactly the same set-up has worked without problem on previous occasions.  I always keep a large supply of ferrites and leads of varying lengths just in case.  We did put an earth stake in this year, which we had not previously done.

We had gathered at the house of IIY at 11am and went in to the field after a cup of coffee.  By 12:45 we were enjoying our first pint in the local hostelry and anticipating our rather good ploughman's lunch.  Returned to site at 2:30pm and did some final tinkering with guys, etc.  Visited the local pub on Saturday night and again on Sunday lunchtime.  That is rather indicative of Contest Cumbria's approach to NFD !

We did have a problem with our ATU this year.  The cord to wind the coil became tangled and we had to strip it all down and rewind.  Cost us some valuable on-air time.  We have tried auto ATUs in the past, but with little success.  We are considering having a separate ATU for 160m next year to enable even quicker switching between 80 and 160.  But we will definitely test any new arrangement thoroughly for RFI, etc.  We changed between the two bands far more than in previous years.

It was good to make some Qs on 10m.  It was just a shame that conditions on 10m the weekend previously in WPX CW were not repeated.  We did get the impression that the band was 'more open' than the run rate implied.  We beat last year's personal best on 160m.  In fact, we looked like reaching the 200 mark at one point, but fell a few Qs short.  Compared with last year, 20m was hard work, with really fast and deep QSB.

Overall, we were about 100Qs down on last year and the score was down by about the same margin.    Congratulations to other teams who would appear to have really competitive scores.

The best thing about the Restricted section is that it takes the three of us less than hour to dismantle and store the gear at my house.  By 5:15pm, I was sipping a large g&t in the bath.  (Sorry, G3TBK !)


Ian G4IIY