[UK-CONTEST] GW0GEI - CC contest - cw leg 060109

[Steve Jones]

After an absence of a couple of years I was persuaded to support the local club, Dragon ARC, in this years events - dont know how many I will end up doing as in previous years I tended to give up the ghost after the first couple due to a combination of forgetfulness, work committments, family committments, and clashes with our club meetings on the first Monday of each month.

I was pleasantly surprised last night by the strong signals and better propogation throughout the contest compared with the 20 or so contacts in previous January 80m contests. Most Gs came in at 57 to 20 over 9, with GMs a bit weaker, and the odd qrp or antenna challenged station still being heard easily above my low rural noise level of around S2.

Antenna was normal half wave dipole inverted V, slightly higher than usual at around 50ft agl and legs down to 25ft each end orientated more north west / south east than usual. 

Radio was ft1000 with 100w, measured out with Bird 43 meter in the shack. Technology wise - yes guilty as charged - I am a techie - I used bencher keyer plugged into microham interface for cat control and winkey, and most of my sending was in enter sends message mode within N1MM contest program :-) 

I came on a few minutes late, having had to return to the inside shack to get my bencher key! But at least I had had the electric fire on for the previous 2 hours to cope with the minus 7 deg outside temp last night!

Activity seemed a lot better than I used to experience in this contest, with loads of calls I didnt recognise. I ran from the kick off and only moved once, to 3kc below the qrs freq, when I discovered some dx station had opened up underneath me and was being called by EU stations (who didnt politely ask if the freq was in use before calling :-).  I stayed on 3557ish for the rest of the contest and dropped my speed from 24/26 down to around 18/20 whenever anyone called me at a slower speed. I had constant stream of callers and although I did start listening on the second rx a couple of times I didnt work anyone on the second vfo.

Going back to operating politeness - as in cqww cw this last year, I found stations calling were far worse at calling over someone else despite me clearly going back to the other station - my policy is not to work such stations until I have worked the original station and any others who then call. Some EU stations were particularly bad at this overcalling.

Not a great score, given the very good conditions, but an enjoyable 101 worked, knocked down to 100 after one dupe.

Cu all in AFS on Sunday hopefully.

73

Steve GW0GEI in frozen Anglesey.