[UK-CONTEST] NFD - Newbury "B" Team entry, G3XVR/P

[Danny Higgins]

Operators:  Rob G4LMW, Richard G3ZGC and myself, Danny G3XVR

We opted for more relaxed entry this year in the QRP section, letting 
the "A" team have all of the stress of putting up the big antennas.  We 
took advantage of the 12 hour operation to have a late start and an 
early finish.  We didn't arrive on site until almost noon and put one 
support up a tree and another on the telescopic mast set to 11 metres.  
The antenna was a topband loop, over 500 feet of thin single strand wire 
in a rough hexagon shape supported at 2 opposite ends, with long strings 
pulling the wire into shape.  The weight of the wire and string kept the 
average height quite low, but Rob's ATU had no problem matching it on 
all bands.

The rig was Rob's Orion running 10W.  It was the first time I had seen 
the Orion and it performed very well after I got used to the small 
number of controls I thought I would need for the contest.  The 
operating position was from Rob's gazebo up against Richard's camper 
van.  We were inspected at about 7pm local time by Paul, G4DCV before we 
had even made our first QSO.  This was with G5XV/P on 10 metres, but we 
managed to press the wrong button and lose the QSO, although we did 
manage to work them later in the contest.  Logging used N1MM with a 
second laptop so the second op could enter spots for the main op to 
work.  Unfortunately, this laptop could not read the RX frequency, so 
all frequencies were entered manually.  Next time we will look at a 
second serial interface.

Conditions on 10 were better on the Saturday, but sometimes a bit of a 
struggle with only 10W.  Topband was good, until the wind and rain got 
rather heavy around 2am and the VSWR went up.  I thought the loop had 
broken, so we went QRT.  Woke at 6am expecting the gazebo to be in the 
next county and the antenna to be in bits, but apart from a bit of rain 
ingress everything was OK.  Richard arrived about 8am and we waited 
until 10m came to life and we started with 5B4AGN/P.  We continued until 
our 12 hours were up at around 2pm.  Conditions on the HF bands were 
much quieter on the Sunday, so we did well to work the slots when we did.

N1MM managed to lose 5 QSOs that were not logged - 2 on 10m and one on 
160m.  This may also have been partly caused by an invasion of Speckled 
Hens.

QSOs:

10  39
15  9
20  75
40  75
80 30
160 86

Danny, G3XVR