[UK-CONTEST] CC April CW Contest operation prior to the start
Dave Sergeant
dave at davesergeant.com
Sat Apr 11 02:53:46 PDT 2009
On 11 Apr 2009 at 8:42, Chris Partington wrote:
> I did not enjoy the April CW leg of this contest and gave up at 1930,
> unable to find a clear frequency to start a run and S & P was proving
> unsuccessful also.
I am slightly puzzled by your posting, and these club challenge events
can be a bit daunting for those who do not do contests regularly. I
know I get similar comments from some of our club members.
But perhaps I can comment as one of the little sprat stations who comes
on and enjoys these contests. No big station, just 5W from my K2 into a
very low 65ft longwire - most of you would laugh at it... I was tuning
around for 10-15 minutes before the start and although there were quite
a few stations having pre-contest QSOs and a minority just sending
'test' I found there was plenty of space left for me if I was so minded
to grab a quick report. I don't normally do so as I know how my rig
performs anyway, but do occasionally say hello to a friend or two.
The start of these events is always pretty hectic and I tend to start
at the top and work down, as the big guns (ie 100W...) tend to crowd
down in the bottom 10kHz or so and generate pileups. I tend to operate
exclusively S and P as my CQs are rarely that productive on QRP. I
started out at what for me is a fairly typical 60 QSOs/hour which
slowed somewhat towards the end, with 76 QSOs in the log by 2130. I had
no problem calling and working people, although of course occasionally
I had to send a repeat. I did put out a few calls, there certainly was
room higher up the band and towards the end even down the bottom.
So at least for me being a pip squeak signal is no problem and I had
none of the problems you are talking about.
(but as for the SSB legs,. that is something different...)
73 Dave G3YMC
http://www.davesergeant.com
More information about the UK-Contest
mailing list