[UK-CONTEST] M0XXT - UK Scout Contest Team - WPX

[Callum m0mcx]

My thanks to Lee (G0MTN) James (M3YOM) Terry (G4MKP) and Aidan (M6TTT,
Scout) for getting our new station on the air for a first-time-out on WPX.
We also roped in Chris and Dan, two new foundation student contest Scouts
for the spotting on the Mult Station. Barry M0DGQ also gets a big thank you
for supplying hundreds of meters of 75 ohm coax for James's stub-filter
project and Charles at Moonraker for sponsoring the large number of required
PL259 and T pieces.

Pictures here: http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/103

We ran a pair of very old FT1000MPs (non-Inrad versions) which were
completely swamped by QRM to a number of interesting antennas including our
new super all-band Mega-Loop (horizontal delta loop at 85 feet) delivering
about 12dbi on 20m to US at 10 degrees elevation (more on higher bands).
However, it also delivers 10dbi to EU and most of Russia at a very low
angle, hence QRM flooding. James's stub filter project worked but still
needs some tweaking. Thanks to K1TTT for helping James get his head around
this. Next time, James will have finished Bob Henderson's filters as well
which should sort out any final interference between bands. Poor James
soldered nearly 100 PL259s last week. Don't worry James, fingers should
re-grow by CQWW!

The mult station ran Terry's A3S at 30 feet on my hydraulic tower and also
switched in a 200 foot doublet at 80 feet across the tree canopy behind the
Scout Hut for the low bands (which worked great on DX but rubbish for NVIS).
Need some switchable low dipoles for EU.

We had an initial target of 2,500 QSOs and 1,000 mults and just missed both
by a whisker.

  Band    QSOs     Pts  WPX
   1.8     152     301   50
   3.5     574    1513  313
     7     866    2203  264
    14     722    1378  269
    21     102     254   63
 Total    2416    5649  959

Score: 5,417,391

We had two breaks of 30 minutes each to sit and have dinner / lunch as a
team, an important lesson to keep morale and spirits high. Some day we might
not be able to afford time off, however whilst we're still novices and
part-time, we can afford to have a lazy lounge around.

We sent our score to GETSCORES every 5 minutes automatically fed by N1MM on
a local wireless LAN picked up from my house about a 900 meters away. S51A
and ourselves played ping-pong on the scoreboard for the whole 48 hours and
we've since become competitive friends. We particularly liked GETSCORES
since it's a way of interfacing with the rest of the world and having even
more fun. I don't understand why more stations don't use this system. The
USA seem to embrace this stuff quicker than others.

Cheers,

Callum McCormick
Team Captain
M0XXT
UK Scout Contest Team