[UK-CONTEST] NFD G4OGB/P

[peter Jackson]

Scunthorpe Steel ARC G4OGB/P NFD Report.

Was it me or were everybody sending faster this year? Also some strange calls like HF2010FCY not the best of calls to copy when you have been on all night.
Weather wise we were lucky this year, in the surrounding villages they had bad storms which resulted in flooding, we didn't experience rain whilst 1.00am. We did of course have bad qrn on 160 and 80m. The rain continued through most of Sunday but cleared in time to pack up.
Murphy struck early before the start, we had the Western 3 ele yagi up at 60ft. When we checked it with the analyser there was no resonance anywhere. Down it came and we found that there was a intermittent o/c between the out of the SO239 and the element. So we cut off the plug much to the consternation of one of our chaps who just soldered it on! We made two pigtails and secured them under the screws, covering the joint with an old plastic bag.
We found the auto atu wouldn't allow more than 50watts into the 264ft doublet on top band, but when the rain came the power went up 50% (weird.)
We used SD and occasionally after the cq test it sent AGN and sometimes it did actually send it again (weird). Must have been RF getting into the computer but why it should send AGN is a mystery.
On Saturday night we though the RSGB inspectors in the form of aliens were coming as UFO's were sighted passing over the site, these turned out to be Chinese lanterns, first time I had seen them. You can understand them been seen as UFO's. Wonder if they can support a wire?
Conditions were good with nice ES on 10M but it was hard going with the high noise level on 160 and 80.
Our target this year was 1000 Q's and we hit that number in the dying seconds of the contest. Not bad for a couple of 76 year olds. A lot of credit was also due to our members who did us proud in assembling the station and supplying gallons of tea and coffee.
Hope to be back next year with a new call G3RRL/P. Stan the owner passed away last year and his family are allowing us to have is call, it goes with a nice swing. Some of you will have worked Stan in the CC Contests on Data and SSB. He is sadly missed.
Keep the reports coming.
Pete G3KNU