BAND   QSO DUP  PFX  POINTS   AVG
-----------------------------------
  160    44   0   15      84  1.91
   80   499   6  235    1586  3.18
   40   276   2  143     819  2.97
   20  1579  30  560    3627  2.30
   15   157   3   85     392  2.50
   10     0   0    0       0  0.00
-----------------------------------
TOTAL  2555  41 1038    6508  2.55
===================================
     TOTAL SCORE : 6 755 304

This was very nearly a single-op event for G4MJS but at the last minute M0CLW joined the team and M5RIC announced his availability, so we decided to go for a usual multi-single effort.

The station was very much in a similar state to Russian DX in terms of antennas; the MonstIR’s rotator was fubar after the storms prior to Russian DX and so needed to be fixed again. We decided that having most of the forward gain in the direction of North America would be beneficial as we usually get decent NA runs and, of course, are 6-points per QSO on LF in WPX. The thinking also was that the MonstIR has 180deg beam reversal mode to put most of the gain in the reverse direction and also a bi-directional mode being able to TX/RX better on the back of the beam.

First night

By the time darkness fell on the Friday evening prior to the contest start, we hadn’t established why we had a high SWR on the 80m antenna (there are two but we only had one usable cut for SSB) and it was too dark to do anything about it; in addition, we hadn’t sorted the 160m antenna so the only band we were able to make an impression on is 40m. The decision was made that the run would start on 40m and the mult would start on 80m, albeit with poor SWR and thus very little forward power. Sadly, 40m conditions were not lively on the first night and so the runs were very slow and we spent a lot of time (way more than usual) in S&P.

The only notable 40m conditions was Saturday morning, some two hours after sunrise, where there was a good long path VK/ZL opening. Surprisingly, in spite of them running (mostly) west coast US, the pileup was easy to break and we logged some 4 or 5 prefixes in the process.

First day

Conditions on 20m first day were nothing special though one of the best hourly rates for the contest was achieved early morning when a large UA opening occured. There was an NA run but it wasn’t spectacular and neither were the rates. There were spots on the DX Cluster for 10m where those in eastern EU seemed to be having some success, but nothing here.

During daytime Saturday, G6PZ spent some time investigating the LF antenna setup and it was discovered (!) that we had in fact been using the 160m antenna on 80m and the 80m on 160m, hence the issues. Things were soon sorted and the second 80m antenna was also cut for SSB. The SWR was 1:1 around 3.720, so we decided to leave things and see how it went.

Second night

Second (Saturday) night was far more productive with a fully functional 80m antenna; finally, pileups were easy to break (remember getting a “nice signal” comment from PJ2T which is good considering there relatively difficult path to EU and the fact they were “running” NA) and we had a good Q-hour running North Americans. However, 40m was very different: Virtually nothing to comment on with very little NA worked and very unproductive runs — 80m was definitely better. A memorable moment on 80m was being called by 5T5DC for a new one and being given serial #002.

Again, early morning, some time after sunrise, there was a repeat VK/ZL long path opening on 40m and another ZM was logged for a new mult. Sadly, VK7GN was also very loud and a new one but was transmitting on 7203 with no split.. C’mon, remember us! A very easy, but missed, mult.

Second day

Second day conditions were more favourable with 20m opening to near Asia and middle-east very early and we encountered our first far-east stations logging quite a few new prefixes. However, some very “one way propagation” whereby, even with the SteppIR stack, some of the far-east stations really struggled to hear us, in spite of CQing.

15m also produced some conditions which was a reprive from 20m so much welcomed. Again, 10m spots from those in eastern Europe but nothing hear here in G; still zero QSOs logged on that band. Unfortunately, that’s the way it would stay with not even any South Americans worked. We did witness a couple of spots from Gs but even those spotted stations were not heard.