[UK-CONTEST] M6T (G4PIQ) WPX Report

[Andy Cook, G4PIQ]

BAND QSO DUP PFX POINTS AVG 
-----------------------------------
160   121  0   13   252    2.08 
80    807  7   408  2829   3.51 
40    469  4   114  1525   3.25 
20    2007 30  458  4883   2.43 
15    168  2   70   374    2.23 
10    0    0   0    0      0.00 
-----------------------------------
TOTAL 3572 43  1063 9863   2.76 
===================================
TOTAL SCORE : 10 484 369

2 x FT1000MP + Alpha 87A + Titan

Ants
160m : Inv-V @ 28m
80m : 4 square + Inv-V @ 20m
40m : Random 402CD / Rotary Dipole @ 30m
20m : 204BA @ 28m + TH5 @ 32m
15m : Extended 155CA @ 25m
10m : 105CA @ 30m (FWIW) 

About 290 second radio QSOs

A last minute decision to do this one to get some more WRTC qualification
points (is everyone else in the UK just silently chasing these?) without
cramming everything else into the Summer! It was also helpful that the
antennas were still on the towers after the Russian DX Contest 2 weeks
previous and the indoor station was all still together so setup should have
been relatively easy. To try and make this as family friendly as possible on
a week's holiday from work, I didn't plan to go to site until Friday
afternoon to wind the towers up. Unfortunately, when I got there I found
some wind damage to the TH5 and 402CD which needed the tower dropping and
work on both antennas and feeders. I also took the opportunity to fix (I
thought) one of the loading coils on the 402 which has surcomed to the usual
corrosion problem. This all took a couple of hours longer than planned and
throughout it was wet, cold and windy (Met Office said gusts to 55 mph) -
certainly too windy to riase either of the 2 towers which had multiple
antennas on. Thankfully about 5pm the wind dropped and I was able to get
both those towers up and guyed off and before complete darkness came got the
15m one up to 80% height. After going shopping for food and dealing with a
few other jobs, the only remaining antenna work was to re-tune the 80m 4
square to the SSB section of the band. After some adjustments to the
station, I was pretty much all ready to go almost 30 minutes before the
contest - unusual!

With the focus on low bands and inter-continental QSOs in this one, and the
lack of a per-band multiplier, I decided to plan most of my off-time during
the mornings where most QSOs would be from Europe on the HF bands, and we
haven't got enough sunspots to give a decent JA opening. I operated 
0000-0622, 1140-0318, 0505-0619, 0720-0742, 1046-1106, 1206-2359. The short
periods of on-time on the second day were an attempt to try and capture some
additional mults from areas that might have got ignored otherwise, but were
generally a raging disaster where basic scoring rates were nowhere near high
enough so I canned them pretty quickly. Was a bad choice to have swapped
some LF night-time operating time for them. While tired, I also screwed up
my off-time calculations slightly and with the 1 hour minimum off-time rule
ended up 5 minutes short of 36 hours operating time. 

The advantage of a 36 hour format over the 48 hour format of CQWW isn't that
you get more sleep though - it just gives you more time to fix tings that
break. During the off time on Saturday I dropped the TH5/402 tower again to
try and fix an intermittent problem with the 402. This time found an open
circuit on the loading coil on the other side of the reflector, but quite
badly corroded. Thought that I had fixed it OK, but unfortunately the
problem returned to haunt me. This isn't a good contest to try and be
competitive on 40m with a rotary dipole! On Sunday I had an amplifier in
pieces during one of the off-times!

Overall I thought that conditions were about as good as could be expected at
this point in the cycle - certainly better than in the Russian DX Contest,
although I didn't hear a signal on 10 all weekend (didn't look much
though!), 15 was very poor with no US opening (other than NQ4I on scatter),
very little to Asia (though Steve 9M8Z was very loud Sunday) and, just as
reported by DR1A, no USA opening at all night 1 on 40m, and a marginal one
on night #2. I therefore spent a lot of time on 80m and 20m! I had some
awful periods on 20m where I just got run off my frequencies, including a 42
hour at 1700 on Sunday, but there were also some pretty decent hours to be
had there. 

This was my second serious outing with Win-Test - better - but I still don't
like all of it as well as TR and I found a number of irritating bugs which
I'll raise on the Win-Test reflector - however having full control of
headphone switching for SO2R from the keyboard and the automation of this
into scenarios is very useful, and ultimately, DOS is dead.... 

Thanks to everyone for the QSOs. Hope everyone else fun - seemed to be some
useful UK activity this time. Thanks to Bob, G4BAH for the use of the
station again, and to Julie for letting me out to play and looking after our
daughter all weekend twice in a month! Should be quiet from me for a few
months now! 

73,

Andy, G4PIQ