[UK-CONTEST] Ropoco

[Andy Swiffin]

That was fun, I love this contest :-)

Not having touched a morse key in 18 months nor listened to any CW I finally decided that I was going to try something different with my leisure time than pushing a wheelbarrow full of rubble around.    (I'd forgotten that it was actually possible to have non working leisure, and actually felt quite guilty :-)


So, I dug out the old TS830 out of its "temporary" (sic) cupboard and  stuck up the inverted L on its fibre pole and managed to find the old up and down key (no paddles, no computers, just an old notepad for the log).   I worked on the principle that the rest of you would value the additional activity more than you would hate the quality of the operating, I suspect it was a close run thing....   I had a real problem sending 6s, it was a bit of lottery how many dots would actually come out, although usually there was a surplus.....  Not having used the key for so long was a bit like deciding to run in a marathon with a training regime of eating curry and drinking beer.....

So, how did I do, I was never expecting to win, just have a good time and 31 qsos were what I made.  I definitely could have done more, I heard more than that although a lot of quite weak signals around with loads of QSB.   Thanks to all those who repeated the postcode more than once - I seldom got it all in the first go...   And thanks to those who slowed down for me :-)  

It was really quite funny as I was mostly doing S&P and must have been moving up the band at the same speed as others as I kept getting the same postcodes back!   I had   tr332c X2 (looks bust to me),  dn11qt X2, sy226be X2 and the winner from Orpington: br54rn X4, still, it made the CW easier to copy!

I was having a good time until g4fal passed me the poison chalice at 0832Z,   was that really a postcode of 413XDI? ,  I'm sure that I copied what was coming in, but horror of what to do with it numbed my brain a bit.   I almost went QRT as there was no way I could send that to someone, they'd never believe me.  Apologies to g3lzi who was the eventual victim (16 minutes later!),  I was so stressed about having to send that as a postcode that my hand froze up and refused to do it, it took me about 5 goes, I'd be interested to know if I managed to pass it on in its full horror.

My final QSO was m0nqn who persevered through quite vicious QSB,  but,  the incoming postcode seemed to be the same as the outgoing one: sy22 6be, is that possible?

A good time was had by all and to make up for it I spent the afternoon pushing around a wheelbarrow full of rubble....  See you in the next one!

73
Andy
gm8oeg





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