[UK-CONTEST] 2011 Commonwealth Contest,

[brian coyne]

Well we could hardly call that a fun event after all the excitement in recent contests with increased SSN's, we got the short straw for sure. Band cndx were crud, not only unreliable propagation but band noise was terrific but we stayed with it - we must be mad!

I needed to replace a repaired rotator, an escalator lift  (Cherry Picker) was booked for Friday - he didn't show,I guess he got a better offer than my minimum one hour booking, so it arrived 3 hours before test start time on Sat am, Because I was single handed it  was time consuming to raise the Tower whilst at the same time ensuring the two 40m dipole ends and  the end fed 80m wire plus the pulley rope for hoisting the dipole didn't twist or tangle, the job needed 3 persons ideally because, (typically, the day previous was calm), the wind was blowing a gale. Finished the job with 20 minutes to go, it could have been worse.

Around 22z I qsy'd to 80 and was met with almost complete silence, switching to the 40m ant to make a comparison and noise nearly knocked me over, that ant, inv V, looks for noise in spades. Anyway what was the problem with the 80m wire? That ant has the braid bonded to the top of the Tower with the feed inner core end fed to the wire. After tying it off I had checked the SWR and the rig Auto ATU tuned it nicely, no aparant problem. Of course mid morning there are no sigs or noise on 80m so I wasn't alerted. I figure that the lift cage must have pulled on the wire and it has gone open circuit, it didn't part as I use the Post Office method of twisting strong wire around which takes the strain and weight. The ATU has made a nice job of tuning the feeder! That explains the abysmal 80m result of only 6 qso's which were made on the 40m dipole. Golden ears award goes to Peter G3LET who got the call first time, he must have great beverages. Apologies to the
 other five who really had to struggle. I called it a day on that aspect as I was not going to lower the Tower  in darkness.They say "Fail to plan and you plan to fail", that describes me as I have been putting off this job for the past 3 months, wish I could fit a tiltover in here.

The shortcoming of 24 hour contests is that you get one shot, or windows of opportunity, for different areas for dx, improved cndx overnight do not help windows that have gone, hence our caribbean travelers got a raw deal this time on hf. !0mtrs never opened for them to the east, 15 & 20mtrs were abysmal and we can see how much their q counts are well down on usual. I was interested to read about the qth of Peter, G3PHO in VP2E on the Beru site, his sigs on the lower bands where we could actually hear them without a struggle were head and shoulders above the others except perhaps the VP5 who was likely high power anyway, quite outstanding for a low power stn.

Apart from Africa, which we always hear, propagation on 10 mtrs was long, east /west tropical regions with a BY at the start, then PZ5 a litle later, breaking windows, with nothing to be heard in between. Sunday am had very strong sigs here from VK6/VK4 and scratchy VK2. I don't know if this islands big guns Alan (P3J) or Steve (ZC4LI) worked any UK on Ten  but I never heard a cheep from there despite many qsy's with UK guys. 15mtrs did open east from here and west to the UK but VE & Carrib was pretty zilch, real crummy.

20 mtrs was very scratchy to all parts, 40mtrs, noise apart was probably the best dx band for those with good antennas but overnight is no fun diving into the MUF trough to scratch a few qso's. i usually grab 3/4 hours sleep at the dead time but I wanted to make up for the loss of 80mtr q's so I made do with about 90 minutes but I wasted my time for 9 q's and 3 BCA's, it really was not worth suffering the noise. I can't really comment on 80m but it seemed quiet and not very good.

Thanks to the dx who so readily qsy'd, without them my totals would look a lot worse. Everybodies scores look well below  last year and I personally anticipate dropping down the leader board this year but am hoping that we (ROW Team) can hold on to our top position. 

 
QSO's, after dupes 610    -    5,250pts.   (Last year  - QSO's  731  -  7,575pts)

Eqp't.   TS570 - 100w.  3 Ele Yagi up 15m + LF wires as above.  Logging with SD Commonwealth prog.

73  Brian  5B4AIZ   (C4Z)