BAND   QSO  CQ DXC DUP  POINTS   AVG
--------------------------------------
  160   259  16  59   2     346  1.34
   80  1062  23  87  12    2008  1.89
   40  1117  35 134  32    2228  1.99
   20  1657  34 122  49    3744  2.26
   15   217  24  84   0     504  2.32
   10    12   4  12   0      15  1.25
--------------------------------------
TOTAL  4324 136 498  95    8845  2.05
======================================
       TOTAL SCORE : 5 607 730

Very disappointing end result for us this year with our lowest score in this event for something like 5 years, in spite of all station developments over that period.

Murphy just couldn’t keep away this year and it all started with lack of 160m antenna. G6PZ had been ill in the weeks leading up to CQWW SSB and we were unable to take part in that contest; as a result, work and maintenance on antennas has been more difficult though G6PZ did manage to get an 80m bobtail curtain erected just prior to CQWW CW.

The team arrived on Friday and proceeded to help with the erection of a 160m dipole, newly cut to length and untested. However, before that could be undertaken, we had to finalise the erection and test the 80m bobtail curtain, which didn’t go to plan; just before the contest, SWR was looking good and the Acom amplifiers were happy but soon after the contest started, a bad SWR was being reported and the Acoms were tripping with too much reflected power.

In addition to the 80m issues, we had problems with 160m and were unable to get much power out there; that said, just before sunrise we did have a reasonable run of North Americans.

Due to the nature of our 160m and 80m problems, we were left with just one band during the first night that actually performed — 40m. The MonstIR working very well but it soon transpired that we were unable to rotate it beyond south and could not get it beyond about 345 degrees over north. The problems just seemed to continue!

It was only at daylight we were able to see what had happened; one of the 160m dipole legs had wrapped itself around an element on the MonstIR, which explained the rotator issue on the MonstIR. In addition, it soon transpired that we’d essentially fried the antenna tuner for the 80m bobtail curtain, which also explained the lack of 80m. Paul went about fixing the issues and a new tuner was installed for the bobtail curtain.

Second night we were able to run on 80m and were hoping to “catch up” on what we had missed the previous night; however, whilst we did have some good NA runs, the QSOs were steady and our score never really seemed to catch up on what we were expecting. Conditions on the higher bands were not great, with not many QSOs on 15m, but 20m didn’t close until later on Saturday which meant we didn’t have to attack 40m as early — a good thing because we’d already battered 40m the previous night!

Some interesting highlights, however, including an extended NA opening way past sunrise on 40m (with some long path far east stations thrown in for good measure) which was welcomed as running NA on a nice quiet band at 3 pts/Q is better than running not-a-lot on 20m at 1 pt/Q!

With all the issues we experienced, the score outcome is not surprising but there’s always next year; it also leaves us time to think about our next project: an 80m 4-square. Watch this space.

Thanks to all who called us.