[UK-CONTEST] G5XV/P - NFD

[G4LMW]

The Newbury & DARS entered the newly re-vamped Restricted section this year.

We started at 10am, when construction of the dipoles commenced. We had a 160/80m trapped dipole, a 40m dipole (also used for 15m), and dipoles for 10m and 20m. All were held on one support at 15m. The area used was limited (last minute venue change due to the crop in the intended field having not been harvested) so we were not able to get the ends of the LF dipole very high.

We were well under the 120m wire allowance in the end.

Ed, GW3SQX turned up to inspect in the 30 minute window while I went home to get a power lead for the K3. Pity.

The Club's K3 seemed to be completely deaf, so we might have a front-end problem to look at. Switched to my personal K3 for the duration.

The weather held up for the most part during set-up and we were just about ready at the start.

The second QSO was a JA on 15m, so things were looking good. 10m was disappointing with only sporadic-E openings on Sunday morning.

Quite a few members turned up for a BBQ (mostly dry) on the Saturday evening.

Topband was fairly fruitful in the night but the static crashes were terrible made worse by the noise of the torrential rain on the tent. Will probably have a high error rate on this band!

N1MM performed flawlessly throughout and for the first time, there were no keys present at a NADARS NFD station (G3ZGC not happy!).

Operators: G4LMW, M0TDW, G3ZGC, G3RVM and G3XVR

My thanks to the many other NADARS members who attended and helped out.

932 QSOs in total, but there were a massive amount of dupes this year. Did anyone else experience the same?

We all had fun and generally agreed that we liked the new changes to the section.

Summary:
        Band    QSOs    Pts
         1.8     116     772
         3.5     140     461
           7     301     902
          14     218     663
          21      99     308

Regards
Rob, G4LMW