[UK-CONTEST] ARRL DX CW G3YMC QRP

[Darren G0TSM]

Unless you are running 6 over 6 on each band then I guess there is 
always room for improvement Dave.

I'm hoping to get on 10M in the ARRL-DX/SSB so I wanted to see what time 
the band is opening, usually around 1130 is the earliest. So on Saturday 
I was CQing away and first got skimmed at 1226 and had my first caller 
at 1230. I worked a few here and there and then had a run of about 30. 
Sigs were good but then I had to go out. I tried the same on Sunday as I 
had all day in the shack if needed, but it wasnt until 1320 that I got 
skimmed with the only station worked on 10M being NQ4I.
Conditions on 15M seemed great and many stations had multiple path 
echoes and there were some monster signals on my band scope. I spent 
most of Sunday trawling through 15 and 20 looking for missing states for 
my WAS on LOTW.

On 10M I have a 5 ele Yagi at 45ft with a Hexbeam @55ft to the 20M 
element. This is about all I can squeeze into a 20ft wide garden, for 
now... I had a good play with a 40M vertical with two elevated radials 
comparing against a horizontal dipole at 40ft broadside to NA. Although 
signals were about the same I could copy the mid and west coast stations 
much better on the dipole due to the lower noise floor. But I actually 
found that if I Rx on my 12-20M Hexbeam (using Pre-AMP2) then it was 
even better as I had a figure 8 pattern with some 6-7 S points nulls off 
the side, which will be investigated further.

73 Darren G0TSM

On 20/02/2012 14:59, Dave Sergeant wrote:
> No pos
> So OK chaps, were conditions great and I need to work on my
> antennas?...
>
> 73 Dave G3YMC
>
> http://www.davesergeant.com
>
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