[UK-CONTEST] CQWWCW M5E SOAB LP (A)

[Olof Lundberg]

BAND    QSO       CQ          DXC        DUP       POINTS AVG 

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160        57           8             47           0             78
1.37 

80           408        17           76           0             727
1.78 

40           525        32           111        1             1154      2.20


20           333        31           105        0             818
2.46 

15           490        34           119        2             1105      2.26


10           414        33           122        0             1101      2.66


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TOTAL   2227      155        580        3             4983      2.24 

============================================

       TOTAL SCORE : 3 662 505

 

A fun weekend at the M5E/G0CKV super-station!

I seem to have a masochistic urge to find ways to handicap myself and poor
antennas is a sure way to make a contest more challenging and thus
interesting. At my suburban QTH I enjoy the proximity to the pleasures of
London but the downside is space, antenna restrictions and RFI. I tend to
use near-invisible wires and something very temporary in the middle of the
lawn when I get on for a contest weekend. For two years I have done 40m SB
in CQWW with a vertical in the lawn but the rumours of decent HF condx
tempted me to add all-band to the challenge this year and that turned out to
be a good decision.

This year I put a triband trap dipole (Cushcraft D3 for 20-15-10) at 26ft on
a push-up pole. At this marginally elevated position it stares into the
roofs of the houses in the area and into the crowns of the trees. A 40-m
inverted V was suspended from the same low level. For 80 and 160 I have a
1mm wire winding itself up a tree to a similar height before it stretches
out horisontally to form an inverted L placed such that it picks up as much
noise at possible from my house. 

It does not take long to learn that trying to keep a frequency and run is
not very enjoyable with LP and these antennas. On the occasions I tried I
got a trickle of 1-point qsos at a rate of say 50-80 and that is booooring.
I am inevitably rescued from my boredom after a few minutes when a big brute
starts to CQ on top of me presumably mistaking my signals for general
background noise. So S&P is the order of the day and night. It appeared that
all big stations were busy trying to CQ so S&P was exceptionally productive
this year. I assume that the spread of activity over so many bands also
helped a LP S&P guy - there were quite simply more stations sitting there
pressing the F1 button running with only a moderate pile-up, if any, for
each. I had long periods with an S&P rate of 80-120 and occasionally above
that. With a focus on easy multipliers and 3p-qsos S&P yielded much higher
score productivity. With LP and poor antennas the pile-ups generated by the
cluster-mob are totally useless and most pile-ups generally are
non-productive except that it is useful to remember where the DX is and
check back frequently for a lull in his pile-up. Giving the cluster-mob a
wide berth also improved my mood considerably and made me enjoy the bands
rather than worry about the future of mankind and the dumbing-down of the
hobby.

Rig was a K3 which is absolutely superb on CW and WinTest was good and
stable as usual. In addition to my super antenna farm I benefitted from
assistance in the form of my tolerant wife serving occasional sustenance,
the most recent baby grand-son who visited for his first CQWW and provided
cheerful and inspirational diversion and distraction and then of course the
RBN. The old DX cluster is banned at this QTH.

Quite a few, but not all, stations that were CQ-ing at 40wpm picked up my
mini-call including the trailing e on first attempt when I responded in
kind.  That is impressive! Next contests here probably REF CW as G0CKV and
ARRL CW as M5E.