[UK-CONTEST] NFD Cray Valley RS G3RCV/P

[Dave Lawley]

One of our ops said before the contest that he would have to leave at 
midnight and another had a back problem and was therefore not able to 
spend long in the chair, so we gave notice that we were switching to the 
Low Power section, which of course has a 12 hour time limit.

We looked at last year's winning QSO total which seemed achievable, so 
we set an aggressive target of 500 Qs with 100 of those on topband. We 
got to 500 Qs in a little under 10 hours, and were very pleased indeed 
with a final QSO total of 618, that's 61.8 QSOs per watt.

Conditions on Saturday before the contest were awesome, lots of 
short-skip stations well over S9 and whereas we had thought we would 
have to S+P almost all of the time, we were able to run quite well at 
times. We shut down early Saturday evening only to find that 20 minutes 
into our off period (minimum 1 hour) 10m had burst into life. We just 
had to sit tight for the remaining 40 minutes, and pick up what we could 
when we got back on.

Conditions weren't so good on Sunday but we kept the rate up with a 
mixture of S+P and short runs. I even won a frequency fight on 40m!

Would we do it again? Well maybe. It was fun to be called by VP8NO and a 
number of Ws when running 10w. We were able to break for a barbeque, and 
both remaining ops on-site were able to get some sleep. We finished our 
12 hours just before 1pm on Sunday, packed up and I was back home by 
2.30, with the contest still going on! But on balance I think I'd rather 
go back to the Restricted section next year.

I haven't got the points here but band QSO totals were
123/143/117/160/20/55
Rig FT1000MP, 270ft doublet centre up 11m, auto-switched ATUs, Win-Test.
Operators G4BUO, 2E0CVN, M0DXR. Help and support from G8ITB, G4JED, 
M0KSJ, 2E0LAG, 2E0RCV

Dave G4BUO