[UK-CONTEST] NFD - GW4TTA/P

[Stewart Rolfe]

After missing the last 2 years Dragon ARC entered NFD in the restricted section. Couldn't be bothered ploughing through the complications of the new rules, diagrams etc so we kept everything simple with a single dual receiver K3 and inverted Vee doublet at 40ft. The shack was the club caravan which our 'roady' Danny GW7BZR had towed to site at Penmynydd on Anglesey and then organised antenna erection and generators etc. 

Two operators were available, myself and GW3VVC. I was whisked off on a luxury 2 day birthday break into the depths of mid Wales on the Thursday before but true to my XYL's promise I was back home in time for the start of the contest....at 3.30pm! The other 2 were waiting impatiently in the caravan for me to bring over my K3 and the laptop and by the time I'd duly delivered through the manic Jubilee traffic we'd missed kick-off; after setting up GW3VVC finally put 001 in the log about 35 minutes after the start. He continued through until around 9.30pm while I returned home to eat, prepare some contest snacks and dig out my sleeping bag and some clothes for what was promised to be a chilly night.

Two days of luxury eating and drinking in the Vyrnwy Lake hotel and a day's strenuous mountain biking had left me feeling decidedly knackered and unfit for purpose and I had my doubts about my ability to last the overnight and next day stint without losing great chunks to sleep. In the event the contest adrenalin gave me a new lease of energy which meant I only needed a maximum of an hour's dozing in the small hours; by that time the wind and rain were really howling and decent sleep was impossible anyway.  

It was a reasonably happy 24 hours in the end. Everything worked all of the time and even the 300ohm twin feeder being blown from it's fixings by the wind and lying in the wet grass for much of the time didn't seem to affect things. The nagging doubts that a nearby communications mast (also) taking advantage of the elevated site may cause QRN problems were unfounded, 10m was reasonably lively later on Sunday morning and in general activity was sufficiently high up to noon to prevent me falling asleep at the wheel. I didn't get the feeling that overall activity was particularly great though and much of the last afternoon was spent CQing and searching out the occasional new bander; it was good that many stations including Gs were spending a few minutes giving points away after Sunday lunch. We ended up with a Q count of 833 but about 25 were dupes often logged from 'A list' stations. That seems rather high; maybe spreading the suffix out a bit in Winkey
 may have helped the readability at higher speeds. Running a quick post-contest check on the log for typos, missing /P etc revealed one particular European big gun that began as a fixed station and then later migrated to /P. This was confirmed by a look at the Reverse Beacon Network and makes me wonder how he/she will be scored....  

73,

Stewart, GW0ETF