[UK-CONTEST] CC contest - what a difference a few days makes

[g3wvg at btinternet.com]

Well it was long skip and situation normal again for 80M in Surrey this
January. At the start of the contest the only UK station audible above "S 2"
was Clive GM3POI. I had a QSO with fellow team member Nigel G3TXF who lives
only 5 miles away and even he was not his usual strong signal with me.  It
leads me to think that even at a distance of 5 miles the ionosphere must
normally play a large part.
Amazingly when I thought of giving up , I tuned the band and found a very
quiet hole around 3740.  Tried calling CQ and managed to run some mostly
very weak but just readable UK stations and some strong Europeans.  In the
last half hour the skip distance seemed to start coming in and in the last
ten minutes there were a lot a strong G signals appearing.  After a very
unpromising start I ended up with 135 QSOs of which many owed more to
telepathy than telephony!

My set up was an old FT1000mp (100W version) and a dipole at 70ft.  I think
many of the "difficult to copy" stations would have benefitted by switching
their speech processors on. Some had really "thin" audio.  Often some
numbers and letters of their transmissions would be lost in noise while
other bits were perfectly readable. Odd thing was that when I asked for
repeats it was always the letters I didn't hear the first time that were
difficult the second time!   And while I'm whinging, why do people call off
frequency!!?



73 Ian G3WVG (operating G0AAA)

 




-----Original Message-----
From: uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of G4FNL
Sent: 15 January 2009 20:18
To: UK-Contest
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] CC contest - what a difference a few days makes

As anticipated, the SSB leg of the CC contest in January, was a bit of a
struggle for me. I only managed 82 Q's. Hat's off to Clive 'POI who showed
us 'how it's done' once again. (although I'm amazed that I nearly doubled my
QSO quantity in the CW event just a week or so before).

Like Colin, G3PSM I was a bit suspicious about power levels - well
actually - there was just one station that I am suspicious of, that seemed
to have a lot of splatter, but otherwise, I reckon that most people play by
the rules. After all, it's a bit of a hollow victory to get results by
cheating. Also, we shouldn't forget that it's just a hobby....

>From a personal perspective, I try and better my results from the previous
time. Sometimes I do, mostly I don't - but it's good fun trying!

Graham G4FNL

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