[UK-CONTEST] GB7HQ 40mSSB

[tom wylie]

I thoroughly enjoyed myself at Gavin's QTH this year and would like to 
thank Gavin and his XYL Margaret for the hospitality.....

Gavin's QTH worked like a dream - did what it says on the can!

I dont know if Gav had any setup problems, as I only arrived on site 
about 30 minutes before the Contest start as I had been in Englandshire 
for a week with my Grandchildren.

Starlog worked well, except one re-boot about 1 hour before the end.   
Gavin's K3, amp and antennas performed flawlessly for the duration of 
the Contest and I think our raw score on 40m SSB is up on last year 
though our QSO totals are a little down from last year's record.   We 
did QSY to CW for the last hour doing a swap with Don and Justin.   I'm 
not sure exactly what this achieved, but perhaps a couple of station 
might just have made a qso whereas they could not hear the original 
stations.

You know how after 12 hours on 40m SSB, your brain goes numb - when Gav 
went to bed for a couple of hours aroundmidnight - i started to work the 
off Stateside station.   I had to resort to switching VFOs by button 
push like the old days as for the life of me I couldn't remember how to 
turn on the second RX in the K3.   D'oh.   I have been running my own K3 
for over a year, but my mind just went totally blank.   Finally I 
resorted to a QSY to above 7100 and ran the pileup simplex.   Up around 
7.165, it was a lot easier anyways.

I'm not sure I liked the way Starlog inserted the Zone numbers for you 
as more than a few USA stations zones had to be manually edited 
anyway.   I also remember a QSO with an E77 station in which the zone 
was indicated as 30, when the guy gave me 28 - its just a slight 
inconvenience I know to do an edit, but just an irritation....

Just a quick question for John- using the bandmap - LIST.   How do you 
clear the list.  I had the bandmap set for mults only but it kept 
throwing non mults up and the list page just kept on growing.   I guess 
all these little things are preferences to the individuals and dont 
detract from the operation of the software which worked fine.

Another minor irritation especially on the sunday morning was the number 
of staions (because I was loud) who called me to ask for the frequency 
of other GB7HQ stations.   At one point I lost my run as I had a pileup 
of stations asking for the 10mCW freq, then the 15m SSB freq e4tc etc.

I had a laugh during the night when an american guy asked me if I was 
Scottish as he could tell by the accent.   Then he asked me if my staion 
was located in England.   When I said Scotland that seemed to throw him 
into a quanrdy.   How do I log this QSO he asked.   My software thinks 
you are in England - how do I modify it????   I politely (yes I know its 
not really like me) to consult his software manual......

A good Contest - great fun, but I think my 40m SSB days are numbered.  
My brain is like jelly
with the constant QRM levels.   I tried several times to hear stations 
like JA and 9M6 etc, but due to the high QRM levels often 20db over S9, 
I was unable to hear anything from that region.
About 0400 i felt like a gibbering idiot..... (my wife would say - whats 
new?)


73 de Tom
GM4FDM