[UK-CONTEST] G6PZ CQWW CW

[Paul Beecham]

Ops: G6PZ, 2E0CVN, G3TJE, G4MJS, G7VJR, GI0RTN, KU5B, M0CLW

 BAND   QSO  CQ DXC DUP  POINTS   AVG
--------------------------------------
  160   550  18  71  17     902   1.64
   80  1163  29 103  16    1888  1.62
   40  1278  40 144  28    2724  2.13
   20  1515  37 135  27    3104  2.05
   15   763  33 117  10     2064  2.71
   10    14   2  14      0      13    0.93
--------------------------------------
TOTAL  5283 159 584  98   10695  2.02
======================================

       TOTAL SCORE : 7 946 385

G6PZ has spent most of this year concentrating on our LF antennas and
new to the field is an 80m 4-square and a new topband antenna. We are
very pleased with the results and we feel our transmit performance has
greatly improved. Conditions seemed quite reasonable on the two bands
but it seems some of that may actually be due to the antennas; we had
some excellent runs into North America on 160m.

It was good to see some nice runs to NA on 15m, but not half as a good
as in CQWW SSB. That said, we did work a number of zone 3s and some
nice mults picked up there.

The first night’s weather forecast didn’t look good and we experienced
a freak squall with very high winds and heavy rain experienced for
about 30-45 minutes. It was essential for G6PZ to lower the towers
therefore this did slightly impact our 40m capability toward the
latter part of the night. Furthermore, a relay died in the 80m
4-square phasing unit and that meant we had no direction switching.
This was fixed for Saturday night, however, and we were able to fully
utilise the antenna.

Just to round things off, the 160m vertical’s SWR increased in the
lower part of the band and using a antenna analyzer revealed the
resonant frequency had moved to 1910 kHz; this was rectified by adding
1-1.5ft of wire to the top loading and the resonant frequency was 1840
kHz - perfect.

20m closed very early on both evenings and that meant going to LF
earlier than expected with some slower  rate hours experienced,
however 40m was good for the last two hours with high rate runs into
NA with a lot of Z3 in the mix. We are just thankful that 160m was as
good as it was! 40 zones on 40m is also an achievement as we have
never worked all 40 zones on any band in previous years!
Thanks to all that called.

73 Simon
M0CLW