[UK-CONTEST] CQWW CW - C4Z.

[brian coyne]

Long Post.
 
Before anything else let me say what many of us thought an excellent piece of work last week with the post from Lee  G0MTN, but only Gerry GI0RTN saw fit to reply to. Obviously a passionate supporter of contesting and deep thinker Lee raised many interesting points, not all of which I agreed with but that exercise must have taken him many hours to compose and is to be applauded, especially heartening to come from someone close to the corridors of power from which little seldom emerges other than silence. Lee, you are a credit to the membership, thank you.
 
Before I repeat my 3830 post a few comments pertinent to UK. My worst mlt gathering ever, not even near a full set of mainland G's. Solitary GJ, & GD's and zilch from GI or GU although I did hear them s&p'ing. (Andy, AI6V, get back to GI0KOW for cw event next year!)  Never came across Chris on GZ. It really does surprise me why there are no guys who will travel to put on a multi op from GU or GJ as it is so close and easy travel. G0's + MO's  take note, the G3's &4's have done their bit in the past, it is now time for you!
 
I heard G6PZ only only one band whereas M6T were everywhere, yet they had similar q's counts. I didn't hear our two travellers to GD on their single bands although I spent much time s&p'ing there. 9L were not much in evidence and always weak whereas C5 were booming from broadly the same area although they were multi multi. Propagation is a strange travel to the goal, some paths cross multiple times and others rarely or never meet even tho' they are on the same journey at the same time.. 
 
 Entry - Low Power. Single Op. All Band. Unassisted.  
Total Q's - 1947.   Zones - 110.   DXCC - 341. Score - 2,461,149.
 
For the first time ever I got a good amount of sleep ahead of the contest, 6 straight hours but it didn't make it into the bank, I had to take 4 hours sleep by 16z first day, so that's another theory out the window or maybe it is just an age thing.
 
A great contest,  not without problems in the shack. Last year,  (cwww)  no problems with e'qp't  but this op became sick just a few hours in so that was a write off. This time, three hours into daylight first day, my rotator failed - disaster, contest just started on higher bands and I saw all those mults disappearing. Fortunately, if one can say that, the antenna was looking NW to eu & usa, had it been to NE, where it was before I decided to check the long path on 20m, I would have been right up the Swanee and definitely changed to a 40mtr single band entry which was my first thought when the calamity happened. As expected my mlt count to Asia, PAC, Africa and Carib was well down on normal.
 
Next, in the 'silly me'  dep't. I still work in the 1980's and don't have rig control. Whilst I recorded band change on the logger I failed to equalise the vfo's. I use the 2nd vfo as a poor man’s so2r, also along with the memories on piles which are busy or out of control, for later visits. Consequently whilst running 20mtrs, I saw to my horror that I was actually running 15mtrs. I shall have to make a guesstimate about the qso time for the accidental change but will no doubt lose a few points over that. On the plus side I had not updated my country file so have mlts to be added for, TO3, TO5, the PJ's so they should more than make up for the losses. My score as shown is still a raw score.
 
Lastly I had a computer crash, mid second day, a major problem for a dumbo. I managed to reboot and reload, convinced the data would be lost as I never remember to 'dump' but, magic, it was all there where I left off, good old 'SD'. 
 
On the low bands I share the problem of many others with small suburban plots, and, trust me, mine is small with no more than 3 metre boundaries all around the house of what would be garden were it not all concrete which also raises the further problem of  earthing  as even the water supply is all polyurethane  type plastic. Accordingly 80 & 160mtrs are a major challenge and, to be honest, I normally settle for the easy option and do a single bander  on one of the high bands. Whilst fun, especially when cndx are up, single band is not the real deal for this major mega event of the year, for full satisfaction you need to be in there with the big boys scrapping it out.
 
The 80 mtr wire I use is poor, a sort of quarter wavish half sloper which I usually tie off onto the wing mirror of my car parked out on the street (with precautions to make sure no one gets 'garroted' if they attempt to walk by). but it does get a few mults. I don't do 160. I asked my neighbours if I could tie off my wires to their up-stair balconies for the weekend, fortunately I have never given them a trace of tv or audio interference so they both agreed - great.
   
One of the new tie off  points was a good distance, not only gaining height but also affording the possibility of extending the 80mtr wire to cover top band, and, another bonus, would be end firing at eu & usa. The plan looked good, after all, mults is the name of the game so even few contacts are very valuable as most will be double mults. There was a downside, the extended 80m wire, it would not now resonate on 80.  As I could hardly take my ladder to someone else’s bedroom balcony in the middle of the night to effect a band change, and in any case if I lost grip of the tie off twine trying to add or remove the extra length of wire in complete darkness it would tangle in trees, around the tower too if it was windy and it would be game over   I decided to opt for one of Moriarty's cunning plans, operate first night on 40 & 160 then, next day, shorten the wire  ready to work 40/80 second night. Not ideal but best I could think of. In the event
 there were no fireworks on top band but 39  valuable mults. I have read since that first night there was not good, anyway I shall certainly do it again probably in the same way, but try and locate an 80m trap. If not no point in attempting to get a compromise length which will work both bands as they are heavily compromised already with the handicaps mentioned. An 80m dipole may be possible but would be in the wrong plane. There was a big unexpected benefit from this ant, it was a great match on 40m, my dipole there fires N/S, not good, this ant showed a 2/3 S point gain over the dipole to the west gaining not just many more eu & usa callers (inc z3, which I rarely get)  but breaking Carib, central America piles with some ease on many occasions.
 
80 mtrs that second night was strange, I had problems in copying, and being copied by, many stns within 1500/2000km range, UK stns were much stronger with less fading from the outer cusp of west eu. Those with dx antennas must have had a ball on that band. The JA's were very strong early on and later I was surprised, with my poor setup and low power, to be called by  usa guys and, when I called them, not being asked several times for repeats of my c/s.  
 
Band cndx on 40/20/15m were great. No matter how well we did why do we think we could have done better and will ask the same question next year and the year after. This time I know I could have had many more q's. Unlike the ssb leg there were many gaps in which to run and lots of guys to work due to the good cndx, but I felt the need to spend more s&p time to make good those I would lose due to the frozen beam. I try to limit time spent in any one pile and re visit later which usually pays off but sometimes the dxer in me takes over if it is rare and I hang around too long and I often don’t make it anyway. 10m was a disappointment with little or no activity when I looked up there. When I look at scores of other 5b ops on that band I see I got my timing totally wrong, a lesson there – even if a band sounds poor keep checking - and I didn't.  
 
Long  Calls. If your c/s looks something like SP92010ZZZ/P, a suggestion – try the WARC bands next time around. Sleep deprived ops are hallucinating, seeing the rig and other boxes transform into slow moving animals, the carpet crawling with insects, and can’t handle it.
 
 
Cluster/Skimmer.  Already past their sell by date if judged solely upon usefulness in contests weighed against disruption and plain bad manners and operating by some individuals. I do not include here 'Assisted' entrants and those casuals who wish to increase their dxcc count or add band slots. It is the mindless morons who do not read code or ever wish to. They cannot take the instructions from the op on the sharp end, all they are capable of is hitting the 'F1', or whatever button, non stop. The only code they may know is their own c/s since I'm sure  their screen readers cannot cope with the qrm most times, or perhaps it is solely screen readers hoping for a miracle waiting for their c/s to appear magically on the screen out of the #*%$$$ mush. I lost count of the times I had to move on simply never hearing the c/s of the stn being chased. 
 
I used to consider that 'split' working in contests was anti social given the pressures of space and inconsiderate to the guy whose freq is being dumped upon. Yet another consequence of cluster etc, I can fully understand the need for a sharp end op faced with endless simultaneous continuous callers. What does he do? He has a hell of a job to pull out a c/s from the baying mob.  If he sends a partial?  he is besieged again by every caller he didn't ask for. If he sends the full call he has to do a repeat because his target couldn't hear him due to those still calling idiots who don't, or can't listen. Not surprising then that we heard a lot of split working this year and sure to increase in future years.
 
Here is another gripe - those non identifying guys. Please remember there are still very many unassisted ops whose time is just as important as your own, it is bad operating not to identify regularly. I was surprised, breaking a pile and having to ask for the c/s, a couple of well known ops who were guilty of this. Strange thing was, whilst waiting in line in those situations,  I never heard another op ask for the call! Surely I can't be the last guy in the unassisted class? Well according to 3830 reports this week I'm not!
 
Thanks to all who took part, particularly those I made contact with, who make this event the greatest show on earth. Long may the organisers continue to promote it despite all the criticism they get, cluster or no cluster we wouldn't be without it!
 
Now - where do I find a rotator Santa?
 
73  Brian,   5B4AIZ/C4Z.