[UK-CONTEST] Commonwealth Contest-GW3NJW

[Clive Whelan]

I can't compete with the big guns in this one, or any other contest come 
to that, and Anno Domini is not assisting with doing 24 hours straight, 
which I tried to do to level the playing field a bit. Probably wasn't 
worth it, as the MUF seemed to drop below 7Mhz in the wee small hours, 
leaving 3.5Mhz as the only viable band, and then the rising A index 
seemed to take out 14Mhz in the last few hours, although paradoxically 
21Mhz bucked this trend.

Despite even worse conditions than last year, the QSO count was up about 
12%, which I assume is due to the increased interest generated by the 
team competition. It was pleasing to work a few VUs this year who 
normally tend to ignore the event, as well as a 4S7, and a few Indian 
Ocean stations. Africa was quite well represented with 5X, 9J2, 7Q7, ZS 
and ZS3. Unless I've forgotten something, the Caribbean was limited to 
V47, V26, J88, ZF2 and VQ5 (aka VP5) which was disappointing. I had 
heard that a couple of C6s would be on, but I didn't here either. VP8NO 
was the only South American representative- hardly surprising I suppose. 
Long path to VK on 7Mhz seemed disappointing, although the ZLs seemed to 
be audible for over 3 hours via this route.

The contest diet consisted of a microwave pizza, and a dollop of Tesco 
raspberry sherry trifle which was about as naff as their stuff usually 
is, washed down with plenty of black coffee. The combination has 
probably not lowered my cholesterol level, but you just have to keep the 
rate up!

Station: SO1R

ICOM IC756PROIII
ACOM 1000 amplifier
HF antenna C3SS at 30gt
LF antenna Butternut HF9V
Logging N1MM

Scoring by the ZL2IFB spreadsheet reveals

Band      QSOs      Bonus

80m      36               29

40m      96               58

20m      73               45

15m      34               24

10m      2                  2


Total      241               167


QSO pts      1205
Bonus pts      3340

Claimed         4545pts



73



Clive
GW3NJW
>