From: Andy Cook, G4PIQ
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2019 22:14:59 GMT

Once again, I entered this in the Single Op, Un-Assisted, Domestic Harmony section which meant I operated as much time as I could while balancing it with everything that needed to be done around the family this weekend. That meant that, although my official on-time is 10h 28 mins (with minimum of 1 hour gaps), my actual operating time was 9h 10 min. Sadly I had to QRT at 2300 on Saturday night which was too early to have made the most of 40m and 80m.

 

I operated from my home station which is relatively limited with dipoles in a tree and an old battered TET tri-bander on a 55ft pole mast. The tri-bander has developed a nasty intermittent (I think around the phasing lines) where the front-to-back can go into reverse, and signals can go up and down by 15dB very rapidly. That showed itself a lot this weekend, and RBN data shows that I was really weak on 20m – at least 10dB down on Don, G3BJ. I need to find the time to drop the pole and fix that – but actually I really need to get a tower in the ground.

 

I thought conditions on 40m sounded pretty good – I was amazed at the number of ZL stations I worked there. 80 also didn’t seem too bad – 3 x VK in the evening and 4 x ZL at our sunrise was nice with just the dipole. 20 on the other hand seemed poor – no VE6 or VE7 on Saturday, and very little from VK/ZL on Sunday morning – though I was making breakfast for the family at peak time. On 15 – just a handful worked, and on 10m – only UK HQ stations. Many thanks to the HQ stations for the activity and the moves. I got a full house with G6XX, GM6XX, GM3DR and GB5CC, but missed GI6XX and GW6XX on 15 and 10. Thanks to Stewart for the try on 15 – but NIL here.

 

Of course – many thanks to all the travellers for their hard work in making it more fun for all of us.

 

BAND   QSO DUP DXC  HQ  POINTS BONUS   AVG

——————————————–

80    33   0  16   7     165   560 21.97

40    90   1  23  11     450  1160 17.89

20    64   2  25   8     320   920 19.38

15    12   0   7   4      60   240 25.00

10     4   0   0   4      20    80 25.00

——————————————–

TOTAL   203   3  71  34    1015  2960 19.58

============================================

TOTAL SCORE : 3 975

 

This is the score as reported by Win-Test. Chris, WOJ – I checked the bonuses manually – and this looks pretty much right to me although the software seems to mark up to 5 QSOs from a call area as a bonus – the score seems to correctly only include 3.

 

Rig : 2 x K3 + Ten Tec Titan + Alpha 87A

Ant : 80 / 40 – Inv-V Dipoles @ 18m

HF : Broken 4el Tri-bander @ 17m

K9AY

 

73

 

Andy, G4PIQ