[UK-CONTEST] ARRL 10M - GW7X

[Steve GW4BLE]

GW7X - Multi Single (at GW4BLE)
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With my main antennas off the tower for maintenance, and the possible re-occurrence of PLA QRM ever present (coincidence or not, it did rear its ugly head again over the weekend), any entry in this year’s contest was going to be low key.   Thanks to Ian G3WVG, who kindly offered loan of the beam used at MW5A in CQWW-CW, and with agreement of the Contest Cambria team, I thought it would be a good idea to air GW7X and invite some aspiring local contesters around for some experience.  As it worked out, only Andy MW0MWZ was able to make it and then for just Saturday afternoon – a sore throat (too much shouting?) and flu put paid to any operation on Sunday thus leaving a void of some three hours+ on the second day with no-one in the chair...

So how did it work out?  Well, ‘veteran contester’ (who wrote that?) BLE kicked off just before 7.00am on SSB with G4FKA from the Bristol team first in the log (cheers Geoff), followed soon by Steve G0AEV. There after a selection of both CW mults and SSB runs with propagation similar to that reported by others.   I probably spent more time searching for mults  with a consequent drop in ‘rate’, but as this wasn’t a serious effort it wasn’t a problem.  It didn’t take long however for my neighbour to switch on his home plug adaptor, and despite the best efforts of my WiMo QRM-Eliminator working weaker stations became increasingly difficult.

Four hours in, Andy MW0MWZ took over and after mopping up some stations to the East turned the beam out West in anticipation of experiencing some rate to the US.  AD1DX was first in the bag at 1145 but it took an hour or two for any real rate to materialise. In the meanwhile yours truly retired to the pub for grub and a pint; although in remote contact via mobile phone should disaster strike (!).

Andy enjoyed his stint in the chair, and handled the pile-ups admirably. We had the cluster running but any movement off a run frequency to grab a mult (unless they were loud) meant loss of ‘sync’ on the WiMo.  By around 1700 the rate had thinned somewhat so we left the rig for a while to discuss and review progress.   I went back to the rig about forty minutes later and grabbed  one or two CW mults before calling it a day at 1800.

Sunday was similar to day one, the exception being there was no second op! (Andy phoned in ‘sick’ around 11.30), which consequently meant a break in transmission from around midday ‘til gone 1500 when  GW7X  fell silent :-(  However, Sunday did produce one of the most interesting contacts propagation wise when CA3CSOC (Chile) called in at 1028 and was worked long-path.  It took a while to confirm his call, would appear to be a novice licence, he said he was running low power and (I think) a dipole.   With the first US station in the log some 45 minutes earlier than Saturday the feeling was the band might be in better shape than day one, but it didn’t quite work out that way. The rate was never really exceptional, although I was ever conscious of the ‘second level’ callers often obliterated by the PLA noise.    However, the band was still producing signals up to 1930 with John, K1AR, last station worked.   Had it been a serious entry I would have stayed later, but with 1,400-ish contacts in the log decided it was time to pull the switch.

So, despite the interference problems, we had fun, and Andy benefited from the experience. Writelog shows we had  107 CW Qs, 36 countries and 19 ‘sections’; 1,312 SSB Qs, 77 countries and  63 ‘sections' for a claimed score around 595K.

If you worked us, audio playback  and log search (plus a Youtube video (!) is available here (it's a shortened 'tiny URL')  : 

http://goo.gl/Y1tOU 
 

73,


Steve GW4BLE