[UK-CONTEST] CQ WW SSB 2008 at G6H

[Jiri Culak]

Hello guys,
Hope I will not bore you but I thought I will write up little comment
from this weekend I spent with friends.


This year I have got my YL staying with me for first time on permanent
basis so I knew I won't be able to put any big effort towards event, but
I spent few weekends repairing of everything possible of repairing to
get station partially running. After a year rotator was fixed  to turn
again (no indication yet hihi), some radials were added to support
vertical, beam was taken apart to realize that previous owner/user mixed
up traps explaining poor show on 20m.
I received email from Gerry GI0RTN that he would love to come over and I
saw opportunity to test station even better with my time limiting
factor.

On Friday night we managed with Dave (new M3!!) to get SWR 1:1 on 15/10
and 1.5 on 20m, and to "kill" power next door in abandoned space used by
local scouts twice a year. They got excellent alarm with old 220v BELL
with little hammer and relay..remember those?? (I don't need to say what
noise it does when triggered and you don't want to use NB in such a
event do you?)
Anyway, I kicked off first as M0ITY for few hours and mainly S&P. It
yelled out over 200Qs and some good Qs on 10m. (Stack had to come
down....council don't like it up too long and we had strong winds down
here too)
Good to see Steve G0AEV sticking it out on 10m. Condx os Sat
morning/early PM were pretty good, 20m obviously jammed, some signals
from EU single ops. Were pretty bad, but I have to say most of signals
from multi were ok. I didn't have many radios available so only Rig with
CAT was FT857D fully moded and filtered and... oh yes it worked...but of
course that was down to antennas.

9pm on Sat I picked up Gerry GI0RTN from Harlow trains station (he
actually really turned up in bow tie, dinner suit!!!) and I had to take
a picture of him operating a la  GI007RTN. He eventually got changed.
Anyway, I created new log and we used for first time G6H callsign (we
knew it's not in SCP so we had to accept often questions of G6H?? what
is rest of call...:)
20m band was dying and we did about 70Qs and moved to 40m. Single full
size vertical, 20dB ATT in RX, headphones, PA and cup of tea were our
only weapons (+shot of Smirnoff each for warm up). I didn't think much
of that in WW as without 2-3el at 100ft you are little pistol. Something
must have been good as we were having good S&P report from states with
"big signal" comments. We thought may be we can run?? Gerry did and he
did well or even better. 
About 2-3am on Sunday Gerry asked what I got on 80m...well, same
vertical as for 40 (10.5m tall) with top loading + capacitance hat and
as time was pressing I didn't managed to tune it, it was resonating on
3870kHz. I took torch light, piece of wire and few tools and decided to
bodge linear loading.
It worked and we got SWR 1.3 on 3700..hmm, that was easy. We were
breaking pile ups and worked both north and south America easily. Wow.
Gerry took over and I left home for night. As I watched DX Cluster I saw
Gerry was not sleepy at all. I got back about 11:30 with lunch and
swapped with Gerry and did good run on 15m(very often with very
loud/nice signal comments..it felt good). It died again eventually and
we had to punch hole through 20 again. I had to leave early as my YL was
getting impatient with me spending all 3 weekends away and Gerry said he
will stay till 5pm and then catch train so I  left and left Gerry to
work away. 

I got this message on my phone from Gerry:
Finished exactly with 1000Qs and 697k point.That tribander gets out
better than it should. No problem to run west coast on 20m.Gerry

So not bad for 20hours of operating with few breaks due to  band changes
hihi.


Equipment used during weekend:

Yaesu FT857D + 2 x 3CPX800'sPA
	ICOM746 barefoot on  160 and as 2nd RX/Monitor
	Moded Cushcraft A3S on 6m Boom for 10,15,20
	Full size 40m vertical (33ft) on 40 and top loaded+hat+lin.load
on 80m with 15 radials
	LW on 160 + RX ant.

Laptop + GPRS + N1MM Logging software


Conclusions :? Properly tuned tri-bander with just changed el. spacing
(MMANA used) worked better than it should!
		   Full size vertical is good on 40, 1/8WL  is OK on 80m
if you have good earth. (Certainly both better than low wire/dipole)

Highlights:   Called by E21YDP,B3+B7 on 20m CQ + run to JA and far EAST
(YB/YC)
		  Breaking pile ups VK4CZ,ZL3A,D4C ,V48M,  etc. first
"touch"
		  Having great runs on 80/40 despite ant. limitations
(Gerry added up to station qualities there)
		  Working 6Y1V on all but 10m. (I did hear on 10m but
there was never good path to NA, and very little to SA.
		  Hearing Bill KH7B on 1st night. 

Down sides:   Not having directional arrays for LF and no real ant for
160 (only 2 QSOs)
		  Hearing ZM2M,HQ3Z,V48M on 40m but couldn't call as
they were only listening to US.
		  Not having FT1000mp handy (left with another club
member) and 2nd PA to run M2.


Plans?:	  With such a limited space (10mx4m) backyard nut option of
running radials and having little forest next to us, I am planning on
having 2el 80m vertical phased array and same for 40m to start with +
Inv.L on 160. 20/15 seems to get out better than we even dreamed  and 10
will be still dead for some while, but for contests the big stack on
pump-up mast will be back for sure. Fixing indicator of azimuth and
having two Pas and two realiable radios so we can do M2 is a must (not
to win but to play more and encourage more people).


It was good fun and thanks for all points and even we were just playing
at least we played decently :)
I would like to thank to Gerry and Dave for great time and great help
and I hope to meet you guys in CW leg (not sure about G6H there hihi).

73
Jiri M0ITY/OK2IT(G6H)



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