[UK-CONTEST] ARRL DX SSB - G5W

[Don Beattie]

At the suggestion of Marios, G0WWW and Stavros, M0BBB we put together a last minute MS effort for ARRL SSB. This is the first time I've done one of the ARRL contests, and it was great fun. With the experience of this weekend, I can see some improvements that would enhance the score, including the possibility of a fixed array for 40m. Having only one direction for the beam opens up all sorts of possibilities for simple fixed beams. For this weekend, we had to keep the towers a little below maximum height as a precaution, as high winds were forecast. In the event, they didn't materialise - grrrr.

 

The MultiSingle category in effect means one station plus the second station as a spotting station to detect band openings. Conditions seemed quite reasonable despite the low flux. The main business was on 20m, which led to it being a bit of a zoo at times. It closed relatively early on Saturday, but remained open late on Sunday, which gave good runs late in the contest. There was also good propagation on 40 (congratulations to Steve, GW4BLE/GW7X for his excellent SO score on that band) and also on 80. But I think we may have missed some of the mid-West LF mults which should have been around. 15m was disappointing - again perhaps we missed a brief opening, but I don't think so. Sunday early afternoon provided some very unstable openings with very fluttery signals this far North, but we managed some mults on that band.

 

We were hoping to mop up a few obvious "easy" mults on 160/80 on Sunday evening, but band noise seemed to have come up a tad by then, which meant that weaker signals were potentially masked. 

 

Usual equipment here - 2 x FT1000MP + linears, 10-40 yagi, 3 ele SteppIR, 90ft vertical, dipoles and K9AY/beverage. Win-Test logging and network proved its usual bomb-proof qualities. Amazing to see the dupe rate (nearly 3%) on 20m in ths world of computer logging - we were called by lots of people for a second QSO !

 

 

 BAND   QSO  S/P DUP  POINTS   

-----------------------------

  160    91   28   2     273  

   80   386   42   3    1158  

   40   558   48   8    1668  

   20  1803   60  50    5406  

   15    44   19   0     129  

   10     0    0   0       0  

-----------------------------

TOTAL  2882  197  63    8634  

=============================

     TOTAL SCORE : 1 700 898

Thanks to all for the QSOs - I hope we'll be back next year.



73



Don, G3BJ