Summary:
Band  QSOs
————
80:   16
40:  48
20:   55
15:   7
10:   0
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Total:  126  Total Score = 2,690

17x VK on any band (Same as last year)
9x ZL on any band (Down 1 from last year)
I operated MW7X from Angle Nr Milford Haven to get away from the local noise here and have a break away from work. I travelled down the M4 over Thursday lunchtime and traffic was very light and felt weird, even Newport (Gwent) was quiet.

On Thursday evening I set up the 40M vertical to get me on the air and I set up the other antennas on a warm and sunny Friday morning out in my tee-shirt and Wellies. Antennas were (For the start of the contest – I’ll come to that):

10/15/20M vertical/GP ad-hoc 20M GP with parallel wires/radials for 10 & 15M. (28M of Westflex + 3M of Mini-8 with choke)
40M vertical with 2x elevated radials (Radials on the fence = 33-Ohms, radials elevated above the fence = 50 Ohms) (15M of RG213+10M of Mini 8 with choke)
80M Inverted L – 14M tall with rest down at an angle, 25-Ohms then matched with ATU at base in a Tupperware box (My wife does know). 3x radials running down the wire mesh fences. (32M of Mini 8 with choke)

Pre contest testing on Saturday Morning – hearing on 80M FT8: ZL7 (Worked), FO, 3D2, KH6, ZLs all working each other. Noise floor on IC7300 S2 (S9+5 at home on same rig/antenna).

I found the contest very tough, enjoyable/interesting, but very very tough, N1MM+ says I had no runs of 10+ QSOs, well, actually my biggest run was 3 QSOs spread over 15 minutes. I had around 10 replies to my CQs and the rest were all S&P.

I’m usually a Writelog user and I’m used to a live window telling me how many hours ‘ON/OFF’ I’ve had, but all I can find in N1MM+ was the text report that it produces. But N1MM+ worked great this year, although I had to turn ESM off as I kept getting in a muddle.

Saturday night we had a big storm – My wife rang me at 2150 and as we were talking 80M went dead. I made a few more 40M QSOs to get to 12 hour contest time then went outside to look at the problem.

The pole supporting the 80M L had broken on the top of the second section, so the top 10M of the pole was laying on the grass. Even though I had guyed the pole on the top and it appeared to be very stable and the wind had just pushed the middle out. As a precaution I took the 40M vertical down and went to bed.

I was up at 0500, no wind,, dead calm, repaired the 40M vertical which had lost a radial in the night, somehow! and I bungeed the broken off 10M section of GRP pole onto the fence and pulled up the wire back to an 80M inverted L, so now 10M vertical and 10M sloping down, it just needed a little quick tweak on the ATU using the analyser. At 0600 I was back on the air…

The problem with a low noise floor and low power is that you think you are louder than you actually are. When you hear a VK or ZL CQing away just in the noise more than likely they will not hear you.

Some apologies:
5Z4/G3AB – I sent the wrong serial so I logged the serial I sent, which looks weird in the log.
G3DR – Even though I ‘knew’ it was an HQ station I still paused, then fudged the QSO, but we got there in the end, sorry!

Also a good heard but not worked was 8P6DR – Richard was Q5 on 80M at 0839 CQing away.
For next year? I’ll probably do the same again, but bring a sturdier pole for 80M!. For 10/15/20 I will try to assemble a selection of end fed verticals.

But why vertical? Firstly the QTH is an ex-MOD and Loran Tx site. The whole area is covered by copper coated steel radials and also a steel mesh grid around the redundant mast foundations. In CQWW CW I had a 15M 3 ele Yagi at 7M high (Which was the highest I could go due to the wind), a centre fed vertical dipole and a Hustler vertical on the fence. The centre fed vertical dipole was 2 S Units up on the hustler but was roughly equal to the 3 ele Yagi ‘when the Yagi was pointing the right way’ so 90% of my CQWW QSOs were made on the vertical.
73 Darren G0TSM

PS I’ve attached a pic, if there’s a link the 80M antenna on the left is ‘post storm’..