[UK-CONTEST] MW5B .. CQWW 10M SOSB unassisted

[Ian Pritchard]

Well that was fun!  The wind was was bad but the radio conditions were great.  Not so great as the SSB weekend but still pretty good.
 
I went down to the West Wales coast near St Davids and operated from a rented cottage where the owners kindly let me put up an antenna in one of their fields.  I carried everything down to Wales in (and on) my car. Steve GW4BLE kindly came down for the day on Thursday to  give me a hand with the beam and scaffold pole mast.  I'd rigged up a double pulley system and it went up very smoothly. As the wind increased over the next few days I had my doubts that it would stay up , but it did.  Unfortunately I'd used a really cheap antenna rotator and it struggled with the gale force winds  over the Saturday night. The next morning the antenna had to be constantly watched to make sure it was pointing to where I wanted it go rather where it wanted to go.
 
The 4 ele monobander was  up at only around 35ft and although it had a view of the sea to the N/W it would certainly have benefited from a little more elevation.
 
I was pleased with the final score although a bit better balance between running and S+P could have been acheived.
 
Claimed Score 898228.
QSO: 2440
ZONES:38
DXCC: 126
 
Nigel G3TXF has kindly put some of my pictures on his excellent web site, see
 
http://www.g3txf.com/dxtrip/MW5B-Nov-11/MW5B-11.html
 
 
73 Ian G3WVG
 
 
 
 
 
 
http://www.g3txf.com/dxtrip/MW5B-Nov-11/MW5B-11.html