[UK-CONTEST] NFD G4OGB/P

[Roger Western]

So, a really well-planned effort then, Peter! HI!

Maybe it's the really serious groups who plan meticulously in order to 
maximise their score that 'threw their toys out of the pram', as you put it. 
NFD won't die, but it may well deplete to just the casual BBQ groups. They 
are fine in my book, but it's the highly competitive groups who help develop 
technology. I can see them migrating to the DARC version.
73 de Roger/G3SXW.


-----Original Message----- 
From: peter.jackson17 at ntlworld.com
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2012 11:41 AM
To: uk-contest at contesting.com
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] NFD G4OGB/P

Scunthorpe Steel ARC G4OGB/P refused to throw their toys out of the pram and 
sent an entry in. I would ask all groups who just sent in  checklogs to have 
second thoughts, after all none of us are perfect. Otherwise I can see NFD 
will die.
We entered the open section, were 20mins late in starting as we had to 
replace the support legs on our trailer tower and spent time in trying to 
persuade our 3ele Western yagi to resonate at the bottom end on 20M. Then 
Murphy struck, the laptop we used last year had to have a new psu, this we 
found was a wide band noise generator! ferrite clamps didn’t have any 
effect, a replacement was found but not the same connector. Went home and 
made up an adaptor. For some reason although it appeared to charge the 
battery it didn’t. After 1.5 hrs it went into hibernation, at this point I 
could have joined it!.
We connected the noisy psu to charge the battery so we could transfer the 
log to another computer but had problems with it. One of our members went 
home for his laptop but it didn’t have the drivers installed for the 
usb-serial port adaptors. Back home for the driver disk. We now were back on 
air and lost nearly 2hrs.
At 0100hrs the heavens opened up and it poured down all night and Sunday. 
This effected the 450ohm ladder line so we were only using 60watts on 
160-40M.
We have had problems using this feeder in wet weather before and should have 
learnt a lesson. Anyone else had problems with it?
We made just under 800 Q’s. only worked 6 on 10M no ES. 160M noisy as usual 
with static crashes. Operators G3RAU G4OGB G3KNU G0HDV
I am surprised that G3LET/P could work all those with paper logging and a 
simple antenna system, me thinks we should have a serious rethink regards 
antennas for next year, and make up some decent open wire feeder.
73 Pete G3KNU
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