I must add that the station was in a middle of an aerial upgrade and no real 40m aerial was available

It would have been interesting to have seen how Gerry’s performance would have improved if the MonstIR was installed!

Please see Gerry’s write up of last years event.

73 Paul G6PZ

Call: G6PZ
Operator(s): G0RTN
Station: G6PZ
Class: SO(A)AB HP
QTH: Nr Bristol
Operating Time (hrs): 36

Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 36
80: 325
40: 378
20: 1231
15: 578
10: 182
------------
Total: 2730 Prefixes = 853 Total Score = 5,033,994

Club: Worldwide Young Contesters

Comments:

I’ll do a more sensible write up when I get some sleep.

Paul only decided he was able to do the contest from G6PZ on Friday and was looking for operators. I decided operating from G6PZ would be more fun than just playing from home with 100 Watts and a high doublet. About 30 minutes before the contest started, I ‘persuaded’ Paul that 2 of us wouldn’t be competitive as a multi-single especially as he had family commitments. Decided to go assisted because its the right level for dorks like me. When you can’t get a run going, just point and click easy cluster spots, saves the time and effort needed for real S&P.

Single Op in this contest is easy - with the 36 hour limit there’s plenty of time to sleep. G6PZ is in the middle of an antenna upgrade. The new 4 over 4 SteppIR stack ROCKS on the high bands. I always felt loud. Every pileup was easy to break. Whether picking up Sporadic E QSOs from other parts of Europe or running into the states, it seemed only necessary to send your callsign a few times for a pileup to emerge. Of course, as an ordinary G station, no-one sticks around if they don’t work you quickly! Managed to work both Japan and California on 15, which I did not expect with a SFI of 68 and a woeful A index.

On 20, the stack kicked serious ass into the Western USA in our late evening. In fact, I didn’t even realise how poor conditions were until I did a SH/WWV on Sunday evening.

The downside was that we are currently limited to a sloper on 40. It worked, but not the way the old 402CD did or the upcoming 3 element MonstIR will. 80 was really tough with the summer QRN. Heard a lot of US stations calling me that I just couldn’t pull through the noise. Sorry.

PS - where are all the Japanese stations these days. I know conditions were crap but I only worked 10 of them. Come back please JA-hams, we love you and we always did.

Contesting is supposed to be fun. This was lots of fun. Thanks to everyone who called in for making it that way.