[UK-CONTEST] AFS YESTERDAY

[Dave Sergeant]

On 12 Jan 2009 at 10:45, QUENTIN COLLIER wrote:

> Operating G4ALE from the QTH of the late Harry G3SBV in AFS yesterday, I
> noticed an effect that I have observed before. This was the fact that,
> after the initial flurry at the start, QSOs seemed to come in
> waves......one could go for significant periods (in one case up to 5
> minutes) with no takers, and then it would "fire up" again, followed
> later by the same cycle of events. I wonder if anybody else noticed
> this, and if so whether there are any views on whether this is simply
> fluctuations in conditions, or whether it reflects some kind of "swarm
> behaviour" in stations doing S&P?
> 
> 73,

> Quin G3WRR

I did not observe that myself, but there again was mainly SP. The odd 
CW produced a few responses but on QRP it was mainly zilch...

What I did notice though was very deep QSB on some near/middle distance 
stations, with some of the big boys being quite weak at times. I 
remember calling Lionel G5LP and realising he was clearly not hearing 
me, but when I called him five minutes later we had our normal 
effortless QSO. The same with G3RWL, when the first QSO was abortive 
followed a few minutes later by a quick 100% one. The longer distance 
ones like GM seemed well down in strength but I had no problem working 
them. And the couple of LY stations I worked (again very easily) sent 
me very big serials, did they really work 150 odd G's?

I appreciate that it is always harder on QRP and QRM/receiver overload 
may also have been an issue, but a lot of it did seem down to variable 
propagation. 139 QSOs here..

73 Dave G3YMC

http://www.davesergeant.com