[UK-CONTEST] 144mhz UKAC 3/11

[Jonathan G0DVJ]

Hi all,

As one who contests wit many different teams on both HF & VHF+ ... and  
without getting territorial about either ... I too am pleased to see a  
report of the 2m AC on this list...

I operate as one of the G4IRC/p team from JO02 square in 2m UKACs.  I  
concur with the comments about the very fast and deep QSB in evidence  
in the November session.   We beamed all around as usual (and not just  
to the east as some folk seem to think!) and were rewarded with 3 GM  
Qs within a matter of minutes, some good DX of 700Km+ into DL, and  
also EI.   Being in the restricted section and thus having only one  
single antenna, it is inevitable that we will sometimes be working UK  
stations off the back of the beam, but please don't assume this is  
because we are just sitting beaming east.  We missed out this time on  
the usual GI and GD stations and like others found stations in the far  
south-west hard to come by.  We even missed out on a few of the  
regulars this time such as Bryn DEZ (but did bag an alternative JO03  
mult) and others.  I don't remember us working Bob HGN in the  
neighbouring square either!   I also concur with the contributor who  
said that ON stations seem to be harder to find than they used to be.   
We now tend to work as many F stations as ON which was never  
previously the case.  Missed out on the JO00 square this time too.

So yes this was one of the more demanding sessions from a propagation  
perspective.  Despite a slow start, I think we ended up with our  
second best claimed points total of the year so far.  Interested in  
the posting from the north which mentioned Average QSO distances we  
can only dream of ... around 200Km is about all we can expect.   Just  
shows how the benefits are different wherever you are in the UK ... we  
have the benefit of the near continentals but not the higher points  
per Q average of stations further away from JO01.  This is why I  
personally favour the current scoring regime rather than some of the  
alternatives discussed recently.

Also the fact that the start time for the November session was  
incorrectly stated in the GB2RS news last Sunday as 1900UTC caused  
some confusion for a while amongst some lesser regulars around these  
parts, especially given the recent survey and discussions about an  
earlier start time which took place recently.  As a portable station  
we would prefer the start to remain at 8pm local next year as we use  
it as a club team event and many of the team would struggle to get to  
the station setup earlier.

Finally to throw another topic in ... the changes made to the  
normalisation of scores in the table last year while achieving the aim  
of preventing people lower down the table from losing touch by bigger  
gaps with those near the top, also means that if you score  
considerably higher than others in a session, you can end up being  
just a point or two ahead of them in the table.

Looking forward to the last session of 09 in December and now, also  
the subsequent reports on here :)

73
Jonathan G0DVJ
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