[UK-CONTEST] 144mhz ukac

[Keith Maton]

This is so strange and a perfect example of how things differ around the country.

I'll repeat my soapbox comments from last night:  "Conditions very good, lots of activity this evening".

We had a really good evening last night, our little group worked more stations than we've done in any of the UKACs although we were down a couple of squares.  There was only some slight QSB towards the end of the contest and the band seemed really active all night.

Apart from a quick couple of tune arounds to pick up squares that I knew would be active we sat and called on the same frequency all evening and our average QSO rate was around one every two minutes.  Not fantastically great for the bigger stations but we're not one of those and it was good for us.

We only had one back of the beam situation, that was when I pointed the beam at Bryn and went looking for him, he was weak but we were on the back of his beam!

It was cold though and it'll get colder over the next couple of months.  Hat and gloves are on standby.

73
Keith, G6NHU (G0PKT, Martello Tower Group)





On 2 Dec 2009, at 09:41, Andy Swiffin wrote:

> Hi
> 
> Following the fine tradition of last month I'll kick off the ukac reports!
> 
> Well what a night!!  What incredible conditions!!   I really didn't realise things could get _that_ bad.   Even the kent beacon gave up and went to bed.
> 
> Such a shame as the day had started well with a bit of pre-QRL MS which bagged JN79 in 20 mins and my CQ was heard in JN61 at >2000kms, surely such a day would yield an epic contest and truly it did with a grand total of 20 qso's.   Conditions were so bad that I even struggled to work GM   (mm0gpz where _were_ you???  No IO85 mult for me).  Dick gm4ppt was only audible when I beamed south (and almost tone A) and not at all when I beamed at him,  until he turned his beam from south round to me when he popped up at S9 - very odd.    Still the absence of "local" stations means my average points per qso popped above 400.  And I did work IO86 again which is always rare dx for me :-)
> 
> After last month which was almost totally S&P I thought I'd try and be disciplined and stick at running for longer (even when no-one comes back for 10 mins) so I did and no-one came back after 20 minutes....   So I gave up and went back to S&P again.    Take heart Nubsey,  no-one spotted me either :-(   But on one tune around I did hear  g0hvq telling someone that gm8oeg was "a good signal"  down on 205 (which was nearly as good)  so I beetled back down and gave it some more (thanks Darrell :-).    How was .205 for you people in the busy noisy places (I hear such places do exist, but it's hard to believe),   Am I far enough away from the madd(en)ing crowd for y'all  to hear my still small voice in the wilderness or should I find a spot in the wastelands below .200 ??
> 
> Thanks to the stalwarts who always seem to appear in the log:  g4dez (well I know I can work Bryn when he's beaming SE!), M1MHZ (at one point the _only_ signal audible on 2M), g0hvq (usually always there), g0xdi and g4irc /portables (brave people - minus 4 yesterday morning and snow blowing in the wind yesterday evening here, but I suppose you don't have mountains down there, do you?), gw8asd (exotic dx, 2 countries away),  and g4rra (always vies for odx with g3zvw and g7rau - where were you gentlemen!!).
> 
> Will I be back next month???    Oh, I expect so, I've bought a new aerial now.   Will I win????    ROTFL.......   
> 
> 73
> Andy
> gm8oeg
> 
> 
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