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

[Callum m0mcx]

>>> the last ten minutes there were a lot a strong G signals appearing

Agreed. The last 10 minutes around 3.600 upwards was furious.

I didn't realise that it could change so quickly.

I ended up on 52 only, half S&P.

Callum McCormick
http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/


-----Original Message-----
From: uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of g3wvg at btinternet.com
Sent: 16 January 2009 00:52
To: 'UK-Contest'
Subject: Re: [UK-CONTEST] CC contest - what a difference a few days makes

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)