[UK-CONTEST] Scunthorpe Steel ARC NFD G4OGB/P

[peter Jackson]

Here is a belated report on FD, hoping it brings more stories from others.
We intended operating in the open section, but when we arrived at the site there were only four members there. The strong cold easterly wind blew across the site and the low black clouds threatened to open up any moment. So the decision was made to go in the restricted.

The station was erected with no real problems, no rfi troubles, it seemed that Murphy was staying away. We have only two operators these days Les G4OGB and myself, we are both 75 years young.

Conditions seemed good but very little ES on 10M. On Saturday evening Murphy came a visiting, the IC756pro3 died. We unplugged the power cable from the rig and we could measure 13.8 volts at the end, so we assumed that the rig was at fault. The spare rig was sent for (IC746) and connected using the pro3 cable, no good. We thought maybe it was wired differently, connecting it's own cable it worked fine. This lost us 30mins or so. Later we checked the pro3 cable and found the positive lead had a resistance of 180 ohms! disconnecting the fuse and reconnecting it cleared the fault, we changed over the rigs early Sunday morning and it was fine for the rest of the contest.
I enquired about this on the Icom reflector and it would seem that drawing 20amps through the fuses for a long period can melt the solder at the end leaving you with a dry joint, but this doesn't explain why disconnecting and reconnecting cleared it.  Murphy is now getting very devious.

Our normal operating procedure is for me to work through the night while Les goes home for some sleep, he then takes over from me in the morning while I do the same. After about 2 hours kip my wife wakes me up, have you ever been woken up after working all night? I didn't know if it was Christmas or my birthday, all I could hear was her saying Les has to go home......emergency......mobiles phones switched off etc.
I got the message to Les via our repeater, he then left the site, I returned as quickly as possible but we lost about an hour.
We had by now some good runs especially on 20M and 40M. Then the auto atu played up so we had to resort to manual tuning.

Tom G4JRY as normal provided the food under difficult conditions, cooking in a tent which due to the high winds was at half height and threatening to depart in a westerly direction at any moment. Why is it that Bacon Sausage tomatoes and egg taste so much better than at home?

We made 940 Q's 3360 pts. If we hadn't had the interruptions we would have hit the magic 1K, nevertheless this was our best score ever in the Restricted section, not bad for a couple of Old Timers.
The rain never materialised, and as we left the site the heavens opened up and it poured down all evening.

Each year I think this will be my last NFD, so God willing, like a certain politician/film star once said "We will be back"

73 Pete G3KNU