[UK-CONTEST] M5E / G0CKV

Tue May 31 01:08:08 PDT 2011

What an interesting report with some very wise comments and opinions.

Very refreshing to see!

Tnx Olof.

73 de Cris
GM4FAM

 > M5E made another attempt for the second year in WPX.
>
> M5E SOSB 40 LP(A) raw scores as submitted:
>
> 2010: 1061 qsos, 579 prefixes, 1.69 Mpoints (this became 1048-571-1.62
> after
> CQ's log-checking)
> 2011: 1034 qsos, 643 prefixes, 1.84 Mpoints
>
> I live in a suburban location and do not have any permanent antennas in
> the
> air. Every contest involves a bit of field day or dx-pedition travails.
> The
> rear garden is well screened from the rest of the world by houses in every
> direction and a dense jungle of shrubs and trees.
>
> For 40 I have played with loops, inverted vees and verticals. My present
> favorite is a vertical in the middle of my rear lawn. This year I used a
> 40
> ft solid glass-fibre pole as the support for a vertical with elevated
> radials. An extension and a cap hat on top raised the current max on the
> vertical as much as was doable with the means at hand. The theory is of
> course that a bit more RF would escape above the surrounding screens. The
> radio is a K3 which has a truly wonderful receiver for CW. WinTest was
> doing
> the logging and it is superb at that.
>
> Contesting is and should be fun. I did half-serious contesting back in the
> 1960s pre-family and pre-career as SM6CKV and SK6AB and with other calls.
> This was big-station stuff. In the last few years I have slowly been
> getting
> back into the hobby. Earlier this year I did ARRL CW as M/2 from one of
> the
> big stations in OH-land. That was fun but would have been even more fun if
> the sun had cooperated and the polar absorption hadn't raised its ugly
> cap.
> A couple of weeks later I joined another M/2 team at a big W6 mountain-top
> location and that was good fun too.
>
> Operating from a suburban location with low power and wet strings is
> different. It is certainly more challenging but also [me thinks, your
> mileage may vary] very satisfying. You don't really need a superstation to
> do OK and have fun. You don't have to worry about keeping your run
> frequency
> because you won't - it would be a time-waster so it is better to walk away
> with a smile when the bullies step on you. You stay away from the big
> pile-ups where the button-pushing cluster slaves who couldn't afford a
> receiver when they had bought the power amplifier are making a mess of it.
> You have to use your brain because you will not succeed in a brawl.
>
> The first night started well. Two hours into the contest I had bagged 150
> qsos through old-fashioned non-assisted s&p. It seemed that most everyone
> was busy trying to run so my serial number compared very favorably to the
> big-gun runners at that time. This may be a particular feature of WPX
> which
> is pretty democratic in terms of multipliers; almost every participant is
> a
> multiplier so you don't need to be in a rare dx location and you won't see
> the associated pile-ups. After the first night I was well ahead of my
> score
> from last year but my head felt in need of a pillow.
>
> You would do better in any contest if you think and plan ahead. I didn't.
> So
> I woke up and got back to the band midday on Saturday. The only decent
> signal on the band was DR1A. I tried to run and struggled to extract a few
> weak callers from the noise. Attenuation was dreadful. I repeated this on
> Sunday. In a particularly slooow period my friendly neighbor G3TXF called
> in
> and out of six other qsos 3 were gratefully logged dupes. ON6LY called me
> and gave me serial number 001 and that cheered me up as I was sitting
> there
> feeling lonely. I suspect ON6LY will be a unique but I have the recording
> to
> prove that it wasn't a hallucination.
>
> The band didn't die after the first night but it was in poor shape. I
> could
> work all I heard in the Caribbean and South America but Asia was a
> different
> story. I wasted too much time calling JAs and BYs who had reasonably good
> signals here but who pretended that I didn't exist. I did work one BY,
> YE1C
> and one VK though. Solar flux was increasing during the weekend but there
> were also magnetic disturbances which may account for the miserable condx
> after the first night
>
> I guess I qualify as an oldtimer (aren't we almost all nowadays?) and I am
> very happy operating without assistance. I hate the DX cluster. No, let me
> correct that, I like the technology but I despair about the operating
> habits
> that the cluster seems to have fed. The Skimmers and the RBN probably will
> bring its own problems but right now it is like a fresh breeze of
> innovation
> and relief from the cluster stuff. My experience is that the RBN adds to
> the
> fun factor. In this contest I didn't have time to even switch it on the
> first few hours but then it helped keeping the interest and activity up.
> On
> Sunday I had worked most of the eternal runners so by then the RBN gave
> the
> appearance of providing plenty of false spots but that was simply because
> more or less everything real had been worked. What remains to be worked
> can
> only be reached by running.
>
> There are some interesting prefixes out there nowadays. I proudly logged
> OM2011IIMF, DR11BUGA, DA2MORSE, LZ855SRKM, OM75IHWC, PC65ISWL and more of
> the same. I seem to have missed UB5ASHORTHISTORYOFTRACTORSINUKRAINE.
>
> It is tempting to stir further in the discussion about rules but I shall
> refrain except to say that a) I have this old-fashioned belief that our
> society is better off if rules and laws are adhered to; b) there will
> never
> be any absolute fairness in radio contesting at the global or macro level
> (but WRTC2010 got as close as it could); c) contesting should rather be
> about fun and enjoyment and self-improvement; d) amateur radio is a
> technology-based hobby that needs to continue to evolve with the times and
> if we don't allow that the hobby will die.
>
> Darwin, the chap who invented evolution, knew that a long time ago.
>
> Next up: CW NFD with the local club as G3UES/P
>
> 73 de Olof G0CKV M5E
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> UK-Contest mailing list
> UK-Contest at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/uk-contest
>