[UK-CONTEST] NFD - G4FNL/P entry

[G4FNL]

Folks

Here's a brief report for NFD. We entered the restricted section.

It may not show, but we actually put a lot of planning into this event. We
try and have two or more of almost everything. It started in earnest back in
January. We introduced a number of new things to see whether we could do
better than previously. The biggest aid was having a third operator in the
shape of Alan G3XAQ. For years, it has mainly been a two-man effort with me
and Peter G4BVH. This year, we had the DX cluster running - something that
we've not had before. Not sure that it gave us any additional advantage -
but it was something new to try. There were several other ideas - which on
their own seem fairly trivial, but when grouped together, did seem to pay
off. After 26 years of doing this contest pretty much every year, it's
amazing just how many things can be done in a new or different way. 

We did suffer with an extremely high (S8) receiver noise level that was only
apparent on 10m. This costs us dearly in terms of QSOs on that band. We know
that we were called by many stations that we just couldn't hear. So, our
sincere apologies if you did call and we didn't reply - believe me, it was
our loss. 

Nonetheless, we had a great time. The weather was pretty good - we certainly
managed to set up and tear down the station without any rain. Overnight,
there was a nearby thunderstorm. On 160m this caused high QRN levels, and at
one stage we actually saw sparks flying across our 160m tuner coil from the
highly charged static in the air. Fortunately, there's some separation on
the tuner that prevents a direct connection to the aerial - or if not, I
suspect that our radio's front-end would have been fried.

Here's a breakdown of the QSO numbers:
BAND  QSOs	
160   143
80    221
40    256
20    288
15    248
10    156

Total QSOs = 1312 (excluding dupes)

Rig = FT1000MP Mk5, 265ft Doublet

Our thanks to EVERYONE that worked us - really appreciated.

So, that's it for another year. This was our highest score ever. I suspect
others will have done better - but we will continue to try and improve.....


73 Graham G4FNL