[UK-CONTEST] Low power contest-GW3NJW

[Clive Whelan]

Am I getting mixed up or didn't there used to be separate low power and 
low power FD events, or was that in the penultimate century?

Anyway, ca ne faire rien. It may be 50 years ( might only be 49, but hey 
who's counting!) since I first ventured out on the FD event under the 
auspices of Joe/GW3GHC - sadly SK these last 25 or more years- at at an 
idyllically named place called Pensylvania ( sic) which probably 
pre-dates the similarly named location in the USA by several hundred 
years, located in the county of Monmouthshire and overlooking the 
Bristol channel.

That being the case I thought I'd crank the power level to minimum on 
the IC756PROIII. This gives a maximum of 1 watt output, but I wanted to 
see how it went against the QRO 3 and 10 watt stations!  Sadly, domestic 
exigencies precluded  other than  a  brief spell  of operation in the 
pre-lunch session  ( what a civilised contest with a scheduled lunch 
break!). The total QSO count was therefore only 5 on 3.5Mhz and 23 on 
7Mhz. I was pleased that the 1 watt reached a couple of 3 watt DL 
stations on 7Mhz and ditto EI on 3.5Mhz with virtually no difficulty in 
being copied. I even managed to get a few replies to CQs on 7Mhz, tho' 
it was all S&P on 3.5Mhz. The antenna was  a plain Butternut in both 
cases which is a complete waste of time for high angle on 3.5Mhz, so the 
results were quite pleasing.

I have to say that this was all really refreshing, and makes me wonder 
if perhaps we have lost sight of what Amateur Radio is all about. QRP 
rules OK?

73


Clive
GW3NJW