[UK-CONTEST] ARRL CW Report from M6T

[Andy Cook, G4PIQ]

Call: M6T
Operator(s): G4BUO, G4PIQ, G4TSH, M0DXR
Station: G0KPW
 
Class: M/2 HP
QTH: JO02RF
Operating Time (hrs): 48
 
Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:  139    28
   80:  727    53
   40:  720    54
   20: 1333    59
   15: 1482    59
   10:  127    35
-------------------
Total: 4528   288  Total Score = 3,910,464
 
Club: 
 
Comments:
 
Rig : 2 x K3 + Acom 2000 / Alpha 87A
 
Ants
160m â?" 33m tall T + 580ft Beverage
80m â?" 4 square
40m â?" 3el wire yagi @ 24m
20m - 4el @ 28m
15m - 5el @ 28m
10m - 5el @ 28m
 
There seem to have been two major parts of Europe for this contest - the
South West (mainly CT, EA, CU etc.), and the rest - with the rest having a
grading of
increasing grimness as you headed further North-East. Looking at the
multiplier
scores out of the South West on 160 & 10 is like looking at a different
contest
to us! Equally I’m glad that we had better 80 & 160 propagation than
OH8X!
 
We found 160m poor throughout, with the first night being particularly bad. 
80m played reasonably well although our QSO total is not that high. 40m was 
best on the first night and it was good to see it open after 80 had closed 
both mornings, however the Saturday and Sunday evenings on 40m were very
hard 
work. We felt right out of the propagation. 
 
20m & 15m were in decent shape with some great signals out of the West
coast. 
 
10m was disappointing. We had a limited opening on Saturday which started
skew
path and turned direct, but on Sunday the big guns on the East Coast were
about
539 and we just caught W0AIH poking their head over the noise at about 1630.
I
heard a few West Coast stations very weakly calling Caribbean / SA stations 
skewed path over South America later that afternoon, but couldn’t hear
anyone
calling CQ or raise anyone with my own CQ calls. 
 
All the radio equipment ran well, but we had a pile of computer hardware 
failures. While we had spare PCs to hand, the Win-Test registration server 
being down meant that we couldn’t register them. So we had to log on paper
on
one station (right at the peak of the 10m opening so who knows what we
missed 
from the RBN) for an hour until we could get the right software build and 
interfaces onto a spare laptop which had an existing valid registration key.

My writing was always bad, but it’s got worse and I’d have a 20% UBN rate
just from transcription errors if I had to log on paper. We did remark that
our 
newest and youngest operator M0DXR (welcome Mark), doesn’t even remember
paper logging and weâ??d have to teach him how to deal with a manual dupe
sheet!
 
On the Friday, while winding up the towers and setting out antennas, we
became
slightly concerned about the levels to which the competition might be taken
as
an Apache helicopter gunship circled the site...
 
Many thanks to all for the QSOs and moves. Special thanks for Bob, G4BAH for

the use of the station.
 
73,
 
Andy, G4PIQ for team M6T