[UK-CONTEST] CCCW - F/G3LET/P

Gerry gerry at tilgate.co.uk
Thu Jun 11 14:23:33 PDT 2009


Ultimately unsuccessful, but nevertheless a pleasant evening, up at the 
clock tower (accompanied by the whole world and his camera!) as the sun 
went down over Cannes.  For some reason the K1 ATU failed  to tune, so I 
had no idea what the VSWR into my random wire was.  This and the 
available batteries (3 x 4.5V zinc/carbon flat packs - remember them?) 
limited the power to 2W max.  With this the only complete QSO was with 
Dennis F5VHY and a partial with G3KLH (who got G3LET but not the twiddly 
bits) and several QRZs.  80 sounded much more like it's supposed to, 
with nothing much around until it got dark.  From 2000 more came through 
but always with deep QSB.

Consistently stronger than anyone else by 6 - 10dB was OLB (I found it 
hard to rationalise this purely on antenna efficiency).  Then came SWC, 
KLH, KAF, LDI, RVM, TXF, TBK, FNL (a consistent marker on your run 
channel) and KDB.  A bit weaker were 6AY, MEM, EBK, UJE, GLL, RSD, FAL, 
PHO and SJJ.  Everyone else was weaker still, generally S&Ping and so 
couldn't be called.  Only one GM - ZBE weak but copiable.  5DI - no 
trace (too far west).  Of the QRPers the only ones heard were ARI, WRR 
and LHJ and these were only identified because I'd heard their calls 
from the runner).  So In the end I didn't feel quite so bad!

73, Peter G3LET


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