[UK-CONTEST] CW FD 2012 - G3UES/P

[Olof Lundberg]

Having invested a lot of time (but no money) evaluating and optimizing
antenna designs according to the new "definitive" NFD rules issued in March
my language skills knew no words strong enough to express my dismay when I a
few weeks later found out that the rules had changed again and all this
effort was wasted. I only read the last version of the rules as far as that
and no further.

 

There would however not have been any CW Field Day event for the old
Echelford club without operators and gear and antennas so we decided to do
an informal field day just for fun chasing qsos on 160 and 10 as well as
IARU FD multipliers to increase the challenge a bit.

 

Two 18m GRP poles were pushed into service supporting inverted Ls for 160
and 80. A club member had a pneumatic 40ft pole which we used to support a
Cushcraft A3 trap tribander w/o rotor and a 40m inverted V. I brought a K3
and a KPA500. We powered the K3 and a little 12V PC and LCD screen via a 12V
battery so we had continuous power even if/when the generator fails. An
iPhone was used as a WiFi hub and provided internet access - simple and
worked brilliantly. The club has tent, generators and experienced hands that
know how to get it all up and running.

 

We did get seriously and thoroughly soaked when it was time for take down on
Sunday afternoon.

 

The electronics worked flawlessly except that we should have checked the
tribander before use. Something was totally wrong on 20 and half-wrong on 15
so we jury-rigged a 20m dipole in parallel with the 40m dipole. The SWR
issues on 20 and 15 together with a problematic regulator on a generator had
us under-utilizing the KPA500 and we ran 100-300w mostly. That tribander
served very well as the 10/15m beam for GR100MGY recently so we just assumed
it would be plug-and-play but wrong we were.

 

Conditions were neither bad nor brilliant. They certainly appeared to be way
down from WPX CW the previous weekend but it might have to do with the
activity level too.

 

G3UES is not a super call for a CW contest. We had loads of people believing
we were G3UEG or G3USE. Not until afterwards did it dawn on us that G3UES
might not be in the SCP database (while -UEG and -USE are). These were not
rare occasions, they were very very frequent and just show how many ops
trust their assistive technology more than their ears nowadays. While we
liked to do a lot of S&P we of course also called CQ occasionally and we
were then surprised when we were not picked up by RBN - yes, we were doing
straight cqs at constant speed. Does the RBN also rely on the SCP database?

 

I think it would be great if DARC and RSGB could get together and come up
with one set of rules taking the best from both such as double scoring for
160 and 10m qsos, DXCC/WAE multipliers, double scoring for /P qsos, keeping
a section for those who want no change but also provide modernized sections
that would challenge station-builders and operators and also attract more
participants and then of course also do a bit of marketing of the event. The
Field Day would be very boring in terms of activity were it not for the IARU
Region I participants.

 

In spite of the soaking at the end and our inability to use the yagi on 20m
and running full power it all went pretty smoothly. M0CFW and G0CKV did the
operating while another half dozen club members or more helped with the
setup and takedown and they also provided good custom for the bar at the
Vandal's Rugby Club. The Rugby Club kindly allows us to use a corner of
their field for our toys.

 

Thanks for the contacts and I hope we will have more activity and better
rules and process next year.

 

73 Olof G0CKV M5E

 

If we run our log with the RSGB scoring (but we didn't fit any of the
sections) we would have got

 

                              q             p             160q      80q
40q        20q        15q        10q

 

G3UES/P              1185      4320      118        147        340
353        182        45

 

And as submitted to DARC:

 

Contest         : IARU Field-Day R1 (Generic)

Callsign        : G3UES/P

Mode            : CW

Category        : Multi Operator - Single Transmitter (MS) Assisted

Band(s)         : All bands (AB)

Class           : High Power (HP)

Operating time  : 23h56

 

BAND   QSO DUP DXC  POINTS   AVG 

----------------------------------

  160   118   2  23     404  3.42 

   80   147   1  31     519  3.53 

   40   340   3  39    1057  3.11 

   20   353   1  52    1077  3.05 

   15   182   3  36     548  3.01 

   10    45   0  14     153  3.40 

----------------------------------

TOTAL  1185  10 195    3758  3.17 

==================================

      TOTAL SCORE : 732 810

 

Dupes are not included in QSO counts neither avg calculations

 

Operators       : G0CKV,  M0CFW

 

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