[UK-CONTEST] 144 AFS G4ZTR Report

[John Lemay]

Morning all

Another report from the South-East ...........

The contest got off to a slow start. I knew there was a French contest
running, which would only last for a couple of hours, so I concentrated on
looking for them while the time was right. Unfortunately conditions were not
helpful and many of the French stations were not looking north. Not a lot of
qso's were made in the first hour and the best dx was down into JN16.

I have said it before, and I'll say it again, it would help if there was a
comprehensive on-line European VHF/UHF contest calendar to help all of us
increase scores and activity. If I had IT skills and language skills I'd do
it myself .......... I have neither, as my friend will testify.

I beamed alternately east, west, north-west and south-west and as the day
progressed, so did my score. Even the last hour was quite lively, but I
concur with others that 8 hours is too long for this contest.

My target of 150 qso's was missed by just one. My score was higher than the
last three years, which is good under the circumstances. The IO83 effect was
noticed again, but not at nearly the same level as the UKAC's. 20 of my
qso's were with IO83.

No GI stations made it into my log, and I worked no-one east of the
Pennines. Where was everyone ? I even worked a GM who had never appeared in
my log before - thanks GM3YXM.

On Saturday I modified my sequencer to provide positive TX Inhibit of the
rig until the footswitch was hit. This meant that inadvertent use of VOX or
the XMIT button would not have unfortunate consequences for the masthead
pre-amp. It worked flawlessly.

Setup was a K3 with internal transverter, running 8w into a GS35B amplifier,
about 150w out to 2 x 12 ele from M Squared.

149 qso's, 9 DXCC's and 28 WWL's, with a best DX just over 600km.

Regards

John G4ZTR

 

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