[UK-CONTEST] CQWW SSB.

[brian coyne]

I was gutted when, a couple of days before the contest, I got an  unwelcome gift from the xyl in the  form of a chest infection. Like many,  ww & wpx phone contests are the only time of year when the mic boom is lowered. I had planned on a single band 10mtr effort but that was now ruled out so it was to be very limited participation. Very little first day, 120 s&p qso's, but the Benolin was taking effect  by Sunday and in just a few runs the main bulk of the remaining 550 qso's was made in what was really a small total period of transmissions. !0mtrs was in great shape,  not spectacular but open to most parts of the world and it made me realise that in full racing mode 2.5/3k q's would have been attainable from here even though low power. The primary reason for this assumption was not just the cndx but the sheer amount of spectrum available providing room  to work and get heard as against the normal experience of being stepped on because low power
 stns do not have the muscle to keep big guns at a distance  and there are just too many with splatter and wide signals. I never experienced so much room, unfortunate I wasn't in the game to take advantage of that, c'est la vie.

There were some advantages to a casual appearance, in the main being able to listen at propagation, such as turning to long path and doing a full sweep of the band. In the event that was not so profitable as not many paths opened. KH6's were super strength but VK/ZL who were weak on short path were not there.  Nor were there any signs of zone 1 or 3 on lp at appropriate time. The only other lp openings I heard was XQ1 (Chile) around the equator mid morning here,  there were little snatches from JA but  they were really superb on the short path for many hours. A very beneficial aspect of listening was being able to take time out to listen to the super stns here at P33W & P3F to compare how my antenna stands up on the rx side.  I use a 3 ele tribander  up 
at 48'. I was delighted to find I was hearing 100% of  their callers although that tailed off rapidly at dusk and darkness with mid and further west usa when their 80'  high     + multi ele antennas came into play. Very happy to know though I can hold my own into pac, oceana, af , sa, & caribb, all sea paths from my qth.

First day I used DX Summit, what a waste of time for low power stations, with very few captures. As a single op in normal tuning mode when coming across a pile one knows from experience whether propagation makes it wortwhile to hang around or pop it into memory to re-visit later. First and last time I will use 'Assistance' by the time you get there the competition is too hot unless you have a big gun.

35 zones worked, nothing heard from z1 & z34.  Zone 3 invariably eludes me, no common daylight,  but I did hear W7's mid evening on south east skew path wkg central and south america.  Zone 6 - I got a shot at an XE who had no takers but he didn't hear me.  Z37 -  There was a 7Q7 around with a big signal but he only wanted to do S&P with usa stns. 103 countries booked but my logger is a bit out of date so I can add a couple of TO's and XP1 for 106.

I just read Marks report of his time at Bobs stn - a great effort, do not suffer any angst Mark, it is always a trade off between running and searching and UP2L has been around a long time - well done, Cyprus may not be quite the best place on earth to operate from but it is pretty good as you have now found.

73  Brian 5B4AIZ.