BAND   QSO DUP  PFX  POINTS   AVG
-----------------------------------
  160   132   3   54     318  2.41
   80   413   4  105    1266  3.07
   40  1044  17  298    3789  3.63
   20  1891  55  523    3967  2.10
   15   654   4   68     990  1.51
   10   460   4   56     660  1.43
-----------------------------------
TOTAL  4594  87 1104   10990  2.39
===================================
     TOTAL SCORE : 12 132 960

Ops: G6PZ, M0CLW, G4MJS, G3TJE

A small team of just three full-time operators this year for WPX CW and as a result, we decided before the contest that we wouldn’t be able to put in an earth-shattering score and would not take things too seriously. There were inevitably periods when two of us got tired around the same time, which meant that one of the two operating positions was unmanned for some hours during the contest.

Subsequently, our score of 12.1mil we are quite pleased with; M/2 is still a new category for us but we got ourselves involved with the like of e.g. DL1A, DQ4W etc who are also posting similar scores in the M/2 category.

As is typical with the CW part of WPX, and it falling in early summer, 20m offered runs of NA into the early hours with good signals. The contest was started with run 1 on 20m and run 2 on 40m and we’d logged some 250 QSOs after the first hour. As daylight broke, it became evident that stations further east of us in Europe were experiencing good conditions on 10m, but this simply didn’t seem to happen for us. However, we were able to work some Es into central and eastern Europe. At around 12z, it was decided to throw the MonstIR (which we used exclusively on 10m) onto North America, and, to our surprise, a couple of US stations made it into the log — but that was just the beginning, with a good run which lasted a good hour or so into the States. Most unexpected, but lots of fun all the same. An added benefit, of course, is that it was an additional band on which QSOs were made therefore meaning we didn’t hammer 20m too much.

20 and 15m conditions were pretty normal though good amounts of far eastern activity was also a pleasant surprise.

Conditions on the second day were not as good as the first and whilst we heard a couple of NA stations on 10m, the were dupes and nothing really fresh was heard or worked. However, Sunday morning saw an opening to the far east. Bagged a number of mults on 10m but we are quite pleased with the number of QSOs there…

We made our WPX CW M/2 score from last year (14.3mil) a benchmark which we didn’t reach but perhaps with a couple more ops (and therefore being able to man both radios for the full 48h) it would have been achievable.

Lots of fun had by all and a good effort. Thanks to all who called us!

The weekend has passed and I’m pleased to report it was really enjoyable, I made my way down to the G6PZ contest station Friday afternoon, getting to the station is super easy and I was in luck with the trains which seemed to be running like clock work! and arrived early so used the time to take some shots of the beach at Weston-super-mare.

MW0CRI operating RTTY

On arrival at the station we started setting up the three operating positions, this year we were going to operate some RTTY too so we setup Win-Test with MMTTY, this was the first time I’d used the MMTTY engine so it was a little bit hit and miss setting up but there seemed to be no issues.

Marconi Day lasted for the whole 24hrs of the 25th of April, and we run it contest style allowing us to work as many as possible and in theory helping those wanting to work as many stations as possible for the awards. Conditions early Saturday morning seemed very poor  but at day break 40m soon picked up, and we started to work into Europe at times the pile up never seemed to end either people really wanted to work the station or spotted the pile up and had to get it in the logbook!

Simon (M0CLW)

We also got some reasonably decent runs on 20m Saturday afternoon into North America to my surprise K2DBK took a short recording of me operating you can listen by going to http://k2dbk.com/gb6md.mp3conditions did seem to go very poor again around 4pm.

Peter (G4MJS)

Saturday evening seemed good we were able to work into JA on 40m CW without too much problem, but 80m SSB was hard work with poor conditions it seemed and lots of noise. Later on though during the last hour 11-midnight was able to get a really good run on 40m into the US and parts of SA, the run just kept going and gave me a serious adrenaline rush and stations were giving 59+ reports.

At the end of the day we made over 3000 QSOs,  there was always lots of banter going on in the background and plenty of beer lets hope next year is just as good.

The op’s at G6PZ  will morph into the GB6MD team next weekend for Marconi Day.

International Marconi Day ( I M D ) is on the 25th April, a celebration of Guglielmo Marconi’s Birthday. As usual the station will be hosting the event to represent Marconi’s Brean Down site.

On the 18th May 1897 the furthest wireless communication at the time from Lavernock point in South Wales to Brean Down Somerset was accomplished at a distance of 14 Kms.

Marconi spent a fair amount of time in this area and his influence has led to street’s to be named after him in Portishead, Clevedon, and Weston- Super -Mare. There’s even a plaque on the wall of the Italian Garden’s in the center of Weston dedicated to Marconi and his achievement’s.

There is an award for working IMD stations so we aim to work as many stations that we can in the 24 hrs of the event.  http://www.gb4imd.org.uk/awardstns2009.htm

Last year we made over 4k qso’s, this year we have a larger team and will be running 3 radio’s so hopefully we will smash that total.

We will be operating CW, SSB and some digital modes.

This is a fun event for us, and we like I M D so when you hear GB6MD please give us a call. For further details please see the IMD website.

http://www.gb4imd.org.uk/

QSL VIA TOM WYLIE GM4FDM QTHR , THIS IS THE ONLY ROUTE .

73 es GL 

Paul G6PZ

 BAND   QSO DUP  PFX  POINTS   AVG
-----------------------------------
  160   145   0   37     294  2.03
   80   743   8  317    1784  2.40
   40   868   8  317    2987  3.44
   20  1438   8  415    3218  2.24
   15   127   0   75     337  2.65
   10     0   0    0       0  0.00
-----------------------------------
TOTAL  3321  24 1161    8620  2.60
===================================
     TOTAL SCORE : 10 007 820

We broke the 10 million points barrier in M/S this year three minutes before the end of the contest. The station performed well for us this year with the exception of our newly deployed 160m dipole which got cought on a guy wire half way through the first night due to strong winds, resulting in no runs around sunrise.

Conditions to the far east were good over the weekend with a few making it into the log on 40, 20 and also 15m. Saw some DX cluster spots for 10m but nothing heard or worked. It was disppointing to experience difficult transatlantic conditions on 40m the second night; for some reason, we also couldn’t get very good runs going on 40m.

We spent some of Friday erecting a new 30m high mast which we used to support the aforementioned 160m inverted-V, though 160m was generally unproductive — in hindsight, we could have put the 80m dipole in its place but Paul also fixed the Titanex vertical for use on 80m which worked quite well.

Station development is still ongoing with our 80m 4-square project taking shape.. Watch this space!

Thanks to all who called.

Operators: G6PZ, 2E0CVN, M0CLW, M0DXR, M3PHP

I’ve promised Paul a proper write up, and fully intend to post something
K5ZD-style to the group when I get time (probably next week).  But
here’s a quicky.

Here are the scores on the doors from G6PZ.

80m   76/51
40m   114/74
20m   130/78
15m   26/26
10m   1/1
Total   347/230

Reading Dave and Don’s write-ups, I do sometimes wonder if I operated
the same contest.  I had a flurry of “what, how did you miss thats” and
“I didn’t know he was on 40s”.  I missed any VEs on 15, but pulled in
all the VE6/7 bonuses on 20 with room to spare, and bagged a couple of
VE7s on 40 at their sunset (but none popping up at dawn, when they’re
usually stronger).  I think I worked more ZSs than the competition on
40/80, but only managed VK9AA on 15, missed 2 VU bonuses on 15 that
should have been easily workable.  Missed AP2NK on 15 and 80, any VK3 or
VK5, only worked J88DR and 6Y8XF from the Caribbean on 15, missed 7Q7 on
15, etc., etc.  Should have spent more time beaming Africa and some time
beaming West on 15 - the Africa strategy was a good ‘un on 20 and 40,
need to get used to being a big gun in this one.

Long path on 40 sounded very loud on Sunday morning, but having done
well SP, I soaked up all the unworked ZLs by 0530, only worked one new
VK, and couldn’t seem to get any VK casuals to call in.

I’ve always wanted to do BERU from a really great station, and am
greatly thankful to Paul for making it happen this year.  It was an
awful, awful, awful, lot of fun.  But… our conference is this Saturday
coming and I was up working on a leader’s speech until after 2 am on
Friday night/Saturday morning before getting up at 5.15 for the flight
to Bristol.  I’m usually good at concentration for long stretches as a
contester but the lack of sleep really caught me at the end of the
contest and I went to pieces mentally, very badly, after about 0700.

I’m sure there were more stations to be worked by moving S&Pers off
other people’s run frequencies, targeted CQs, swinging the antenna more
and changing band, but I was badly ’sleep drunk’ and lacked the ability
to do much other than sit on a frequency hitting F1.  Should have CQed
to Canada for a while on 40, and did manage a short burst of 5 VK/ZLs on
20 after 0830 for thought it must be a short path opening and left the
antenna there.  I have never been so mentally muntered during a contest
before, especially a 24 hour one.

I didn’t go into the contest thinking I could actually win, with Justin
at M6T, but I was only two bonus QSOs away from beating him and only
seven from beating Don for the win.  Had I known I was that close I may
have kept it together a bit better in the last few hours and pulled out
the extra QSOs from somewhere on Saturday.  Especially, I don’t think I
made the most of 15.  There were more QSOs to be made there.  But more
lessons to be learned, as always.  Overall I am happy with how I
utilised a vastly better station in a contest where strategy is king.

Great to hear all the VUs and ZSs and congratulations to PJT and BUO for
all the work in getting them involved.  VK seems to be the problem now,
with great activity from committed clusters but little casual activity.
Perhaps someone could do an article for the WIA magazine like the one I
did for RadCom a few years ago, except from an Oz perspective.

Most fun bits - too many to count, but V8 on two bands, filling out VU
bonuses on 2 bands with room to spare, VY1EI on 20, big loud VKs and ZLs
on 40 at sunset, the great patience of VK4OQ, VU2PTT and ZS4U to give me
ESP bonuses on 80, all the old familiar calls, all the new calls.  Not
fun bits - 15m on Sunday morning being the worst I have EVER heard it,
even worse than the Sunday of WWCW this year.

Congratulations to G3BJ on the clubhouse lead and what looks like a
great win.

73 and see you all next year.

Gerry GI0RTN
______________________________________________

 BAND   QSO  S/P DUP  POINTS  AVG
----------------------------------
  160    63   29   1     189 3.00
   80   692   47   8    2076 3.00
   40  1181   57  36    3543 3.00
   20  1497   59  57    4491 3.00
   15   205   36   4     615 3.00
   10     0    0   0       0 0.00
----------------------------------
TOTAL  3638  228 106   10914 3.00
==================================
     TOTAL SCORE : 2 488 392

This was the G6PZ team’s first effort in the multi-two category and we had an enjoyable contest. 

Some issues with the Titanex vertical resulted in nobody being able to hear us on the first night which rendered the band virtually useless. We fixed the issue during the daytime on Saturday but unfortunately, it would seem that conditions on the second night were not as good and thus we never “caught up”. It transpired that the issue was simply the tuner, but at least we now have a working 160m antenna. 

Sadly, 15m never really generated any serious runs but conditions on the second day were better and we able to at least get a couple of hundred QSOs in the log with some much needed additional mults. Judging from DX spots, it would seem that some stations further east in Europe had some similar conditions on the first day, but this wasn’t the case for us. 

As this was our first effort in M/2, we didn’t know what to expect by way of end result, but having perused the 2008 results and realising that the winning European M/2 score was ~2.0 meg, we made that our ‘realistic’ target. We were pleased to have exceeded that target around mid- to late-afternoon on the Sunday and thusly made 2.5 mil our next target — had we had another 30 minutes or so, we feel we would have achieved that too; we are therefore quite pleased with the outcome although it appears scores this year are overall higher.  

For sure this was an entertaining contest and we are ever improving the station gearing towards more M/2 contest efforts. Our 80m 4-square is under construction and, all being well, will be operational for the autumn contest season. 

Thanks to everyone who called and see you in WPX CW at the end of the month.

Call: G6PZ
Operator(s): UT5UDX
Station: G6PZ

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: nr Bristol
Operating Time (hrs): 30
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts
-----------------
  80:  350  1426
  40:  799  3676
  20:  904  2339
  15:  167   387
  10:
-----------------
Total: 2220  7828  Prefixes = 758  Total Score = 5,933,624

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.

I needed a  “winkey”  to work with ” Starlog” the program that we use as part of the GB7HQ team for IARU, as  existing serial keying that I use with our normal Wintest is not supported in Starlog .

I ordered two units from America some time ago now and they arrived yesterday. Too late! but luckily Simon donated a Microham keyer with a built in winkey to the station which I used for IARU.

Anyway after paying the £20. 00 vat due on collection at the post office (no import duty) I had 2 very well packed K1EL Winkeyer USB kits.

Each kit was supplied complete with all parts, documentation consisted of a mini cd with USB drivers and comprehensive instruction manuals that were concise and easy to understand.

The build took about 2 hrs each and the only parts not supplied was some hook up wire for the speed control pot, (I used a single core out of an intruder alarm cable) and some solder.

The only tools needed are a fine tipped iron, small philips screwdriver, a pair of side cutters and a small adjustable spanner to nip the nut up on the speed control pot. If you have an adjustable temperature control iron this is ideal as there are some very fine, but also heavier joints to be made.

If you follow the instructions they take you through a logical step by step build that starts with mounting the resistors to finally inserting the IC’s in their holders to final testing.

The unit can be powered by the usb port or the internal battery pack which can automatically switch between the two for stand alone operation.

I’ve hooked it up to Wintest and its neat to be able to adjust it’s cw keying speed with the Winkey front mounted pot.

The quality of the product is first class, the hardware fits together nicely giving a professional finish.

K1EL has obviously put alot of thought into this kit and I thank him for that as the build was enjoyable and worked first time.

73 Paul G6PZ