[UK-CONTEST] SSB FD - G3SJJ/P - Restricted

[Chris G3SJJ]

Hard work but enjoyable! Very tiring with just two of us to transport everything to site, set up masts and tent on Friday, continue on Saturday with 
setting up the station, then dismantling and transporting home, plus operating 24 hours with just 3 hours sleep!

I don't think the higher bands were as good as last year. We couldn't work any JAs and only had 5 US Qs. We had a bad start as our strategy was wrong 
for the prevailing conditions. We had hoped to build a good mult score with all the Asian activity on 10m and 15m, as we did last year, but it didn't 
work. Sunday was good for us though with some superb runs into DL on 40m and 20m so our Points per Q ratio was good and we caught up on our Q and Mult 
target.

Our antenna was the usual doublet with jumpers to make it into a 20m EDZ, 15m EDZ or 80m half wave. The system works well and it is just a matter of a 
few minutes to quickly lower each end and open or close the jumpers. FT1kMP with 1.8KHz IF filters and the 2KHz filter out of my FT1KMP fitted into 
the sub Rx. After all my networking problems earlier in the week it was pleasing to have a solid connection throughout the weekend. N1MM performed 
excellently as always. Our host Mike G3UOD provided us with a 3G Router and UHF beam on a tripod with which we could access the Internet. It was most 
useful to see Cluster Spots and keep track of what was happening on other bands.

Last year we had problems with my SR2O mic switching unit so recently I rebuilt the unit a couple of months ago. It worked flawlessly and was great 
for the two us to S&P. First one to hit the footswitch gets the tx. You do have to remember to change tx focus on the radio though or else you end up 
calling on the other op's QRG!

The worst technical problem was our proposed DVK system which had to be abandoned. I had recently purchased a mHam U2R two radio controller for use on 
my SO2R system at home. Since all my station antennas are at least 90m from the shack and coax fed I don't get any RF feedback problems, and also I 
was unable to test the unit under FD conditions. We could not get rid of the RF problem despite a large amount of clip-on ferrites liberally installed 
on all leads so all CQing was done with real voice which was tiring and probably lost us a few Qs.

Domestics were good as I previosuly reported. Saturday evening dinner was given a 5 Star rating as was our Very Full English Breakfast cooked by Dave. 
We nearly had a disaster though as Mike's dog appeared and spotted the saucepan of hot beans. Mike was very good, he took the pan away, washed it and 
provided us with a new can! We continued and ate a hearty breakfast!

I do hope that this year this year the adjudicators are more accurate in their checking. Having put all the effort in to our weekend it really is very 
depressing to see the UBN report contain known good QSOs that shouldn't have been penalised.

That's it for another year. Chris G3SJJ

   Band    QSOs    Pts     DXC
     3.5     208     968      19
        7     296     1207    26
      14     171     669      44
      21      40      127      25
      28      16       56         9
   Total     731    3027  123        Score : 372,321