[UK-CONTEST] MW1LCR: SSB FD & Convention

[ukcontest at btconnect.com]

SSB Field Day 2011

MW1LCR:

For this years effort I had a slightly different location for my contest
entry site, being some 150 metres away from my usual pitch, again at about
1400 feet asl, with a clear take off to the horizon, North through East to
South.

This new site offered the opportunity of an Ash tree as an antenna support,
and more space for the antenna. Without wishing to bore readers,this year's
antenna was a large rectangular loop, fed with open wire feeder, and matched
with a home brew remote control ATU located at the base of the antenna,
finally coax back to the shack (about 6 metres away). 

I had carried out a trial run during the IOTA contest. Then, the antenna
seemed to perform well during testing on 10-15 and 20m, sort-of-average on
40m and relatively poorly on 80m (compared to a dipole on 40 & 80).
Investigations and head scratching afterwards led me to the conclusion that
my choice of feed point was wrong. 

The week prior to SSB FD, I carried out my usual pre-contest testing and
discovered a rather erratic generator. An afternoon of servicing and it was
running well. Station build commenced promptly at 2pm on Friday afternoon,
with the antenna rope in the Ash tree taking 6 attempts to position
correctly. The other antenna support went into the air as usual in about an
hour, and by 7pm I had power, comms and a modicum of comfort. Testing
indicated an improvement in performance on 80m & 40m as a result of
re-positioning the feed point to the loop. 

Saturday morning came, and the logging and contest monitoring system
configured and a connection established on VHF to the cluster network.
Interfaces to the transceiver (IC756ProII) and home brew ATU went without a
hitch and all was well for the kick off later in the day.

A few pre-contest QSO's netted the Bristol mob chatting on about their 7MHz
yagi, a minor conversation about dentistry, and some comedian recording the
QSO, and playing back in near real time. This was a taste of what was to
come! 

The contest seemed to get off to a slow start, and I was concerned that my
first hour's rate was poor. Nevertheless, the first hour or so yielded some
particularly good DX as multipliers, with Mayotte being one. 10m seemed to
open sporadically for long haul DX, and didn't yield much in the way of near
stations. As expected 20m and 40m where the money bands, with the majority
of 5 point /P stations being on the lowest three bands. The contest ticked
along quite well, and my tactics this year seemed to have worked well. As
usual I fell asleep, although for not as long this year!

Surprisingly I never encountered any jamming on 80m this year, even though I
was parked up on 3775 for most of my visit on that band. On 40m however, I
did encounter a few dead carriers, although except for one, none caused me
any problems. The one carrier on 40m that did cause me an issue, (a local) I
dealt with as the carrier dropped and I called him by his callsign. No
carrier afterwards. Funny that. Someone else did record & play back QSO's I
had just had on 20m, but I think that was more of an accident than
deliberate interference. Nice to know someone was recording me, but who?

Having reached my goal last year, I set myself the challenge of 1000 QSO's
and 150 Multipliers as this year's target. 
My claimed score is 1061 QSO's, 169 Mults and score of about 650,000 points
or so.

Summary
 Band    QSOs    Pts  DXC
   3.5     194     838   23
     7     282    1098   35
    14     453    1581   59
    21     100     311   36
    28      32     112   16
 Total    1061    3940  169

Thanks to all who worked me.

Since 2012 will mark the 30th Anniversary of my first encounter with SSB FD
I am considering something special to mark the occasion. 

Anyone from N.Wales / N.West going to the RSGB Convention? Please contact me
off list. 

Thanks Adrian Rees MW1LCR