[UK-CONTEST] GM7V CQ WW SSB 2008....long again, sorry!

Tue Oct 28 19:52:12 EDT 2008

Another year, another CQWWSSB. Expectations were not that high after a rather rough time last year with poor solar activity, yet a month before in the CQWW RTTY I read reports of relatively good conditions so I tried to be optimistic. Spots and flux were better earlier in the month but it all went quiet last week but at least the K index kept low.

Preparations this year were rather patchy and spread out by my inability to get any sustained time to get things sorted. Chris, GM3WOJ came through in early September and helped install a 40m 4-square which I must say seems to be a very good performer. My 10m 5el yagi has a rather high SWR but I had no time to fix it, nor the similar issue with 4el on 20m. 4el on 15m was good, as was the 80m vertical. On the Friday prior, my 160m dipole and inverted L both needed shortening for SSB and I installed a C3 on a scaffold mast for a ‘second direction’ on the high bands and strung up beverages in the field. In the shack I had the usual headache getting my mini-network to work with the rigs and Win-Test but all this was my own fault for not writing down what I did last time. Chris had done a brilliant job with band decoders to switch band-pass filters and antennas which took a lot of issues completely away. I could still do with auto tune amps but that won’t happen.

But I was ready for the off and even managed to doze for a couple of hours before 0000z.

Topband went well with good NA signals from the start and QRM was not too bad. 80m was OK though QRM was grim and the NA stations seemed weaker than on 160. Forty was its usual mess for the first few hours but seemed quite good post sunrise and I was pleased to be called by KH7B and several KL7s. The first morning majored on 20m. I had a 269 hour 0900-1000 including a few JAs. 15m was very odd on Sat morning. Some strong signals from SE Asia, Europeans were fading in and out, UA3,4 and 6 were consistently loud and UA9s were there but often CQed in my face. I struggled to get any run of anything on 15m and never heard a squeak from JA. The transition to the west was quite rapid and by 1230 NA was runable. This proved to be just as well with the NA opening being reasonable including a 200+ hour at 1300 because 15m never happened. Signals were weak from SA and I managed only S&P to the Carib and SA with only three stations in W5 as the only NA showing up, no run possible. 40m was runable to the US in the evening.

Saturday was terrible up here weather-wise. The wind was extremely strong though it remained dry but the gale had several effects. Frequently I could not get the T2X to turn the 4el on 20m so it stuck at 70 deg all morning and I managed to get it round to about 280 deg around noon but could not shift it here and there as the QSOs required. I was relying on the C3 to keep up with EU and other places but noticed it wasn’t doing as well as expected. When I went to 160m late on Saturday night I noticed the dipole had an impossibly high SWR and a couple of the beverages did not work. The loss of the dipole was a problem as I’d cut the Inv-L and the dipole differently to try to cover the band and this cramped my ‘style’. I decided to investigate outside about midnight as the wind had dropped. Chaos…..two trashed beverages, dipole snapped one leg at feedpoint and blown so far away I could hardly believe it, C3 turned about 100 degrees counterclockwise and had spent most of the day pointing north instead of EU and due east instead of south America…….those 2 inch clamps don’t do well on the sub-2 inch scaff poles when there is severe turning stress! At least I could compensate with the rotator on Sunday as it was reasonably calm. Furthermore, the C3 had a terrible, and rapidly variable SWR when used because the driven ‘cell’ was flapping about in the wind like a demented spider. It’s a good antenna when the wind doesn’t blow but not much use up here after about August! After my 90 min sleep I went out to try to fix the beverages just after 0300 on Sunday (don't ask, we all get a bit irrational!) but found the damage way too much to manage and left them alone.

40m was quite good on Sunday morning, 20m less good than Saturday and I tried more on 15m which brought good mults from the east, including my only JA on 15m, but the running was poor and propagation was very selective. EU was almost absent, pipeline to UA6, loud YB and HS but no volume. While I’d managed a few QSOs on 10m as ESP strength and rapid fading on Saturday, there was nil on Sunday apart from two PYs in the afternoon. Sunday afternoon was again good to NA on 20m but the QRM was much worse than on Saturday. I kept a close eye on 15m and went there earlier and managed a couple of short runs to NA. Again the opening was very selective. 5’s and 4’s were occasionally loud but W1-3 were virtually all ESP strength but VO1 was very loud….hmmmmm. More S&P for mults. 20m went well, so did 40m in the evening, 80m was still productive to Europe but 160m was slow until the last half hour!

Physically I lasted better than I expected but still struggled to stay awake at times, Sunday evening saw periods of strangle ‘hallucinations’ where radios, walls, doors and so on seemed to flicker or jump to quirky angles….difficult to explain, a bit like visual dizziness in rapid bursts! Radio ‘on time’ about 43 hours but I only slept 90 mins and spent too long tramping about outside to no avail or just staring at the rig!

But all those good runs and being called by great DX mults makes it all worthwhile…….doesn’t it?

………..and I succeeded in completely missing so many mults I subsequently learned were on, including VU7 and VK9…oh well.

Thanks to all who called in. See you all next time.

Keith GM4YXI (GM7V)

Contest         : CQ World Wide DX Contest

Callsign        : GM7V

Mode            : PHONE

Category        : Single Operator

Band(s)         : All bands (AB)

Class           : High Power (HP) Unassisted

Zone/State/...  : 14

Locator         : IO87WJ

Operating time  : 42h55

 BAND   QSO  CQ DXC DUP  POINTS   AVG

--------------------------------------

  160   360  11  59   6     490  1.36

   80   865  17  81   9    1077  1.25

   40   745  27  88  10    1289  1.73

   20  1705  37 114  22    3713  2.18

   15   383  29  90   5     795  2.08

   10    22   6  16   0      37  1.68

--------------------------------------

TOTAL  4080 127 448  52    7401  1.81

======================================

       TOTAL SCORE : 4 259 600

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