From: David G3YYD
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2021 17:51:19 GMT
On Friday fixed my 40m dipole all the wind moving my homebrew choke balun plastic box had caused a solder joint to fail inside the box. Further my 40m delta the matching inductance and capacitor wiring came adrift so also fixed on Friday dodging the rain showers. I did not lower any antenna during the winds as peak speed of 60MPH is not a worry even though I am on top of a hill. Maybe I need a bigger Yagi…
Enjoyable walk in the park so to speak as it’s not a rate contest and I entered the 12 hour section.
I tried a different strategy from last year in entering the 12 hour version. I would mop everyone I could find and then stop for an hour. It meant I could relax in between the stints and chat to XYL do other hobbies till it was time to return to the next part of the walk. In the end I did 11 hours and 27 minutes.
Nice to have some DX come to a G (well M) prefix rather than the other way round and not having to compete with the rest of EU. Some of the 5B4 signals were huge one came in at +50 over S9, not a common occurrence on my K3.
40m was interesting in that I have two antennas – a dipole at 50ft and a vertically polarised delta loop. The Delta in the evening was a couple of S units over the dipole. Indicating that the take off angle was considerably lower that the dipole’s. The downside to the delta is it has higher manmade noise level.
Memorial was listening for ZD7BG on 15m towards the end of the contest, nothing but I left the other radio on it as I S&P on 20m/40m. I thought the ionisation is increasing maybe will be good before 1000utc. Could just detect him at 0925, a little bit better at 0935 and then just strong enough at 0943 so I called and got him in the log.
It always amazes me how many people call zero beat in a pile up – I like it as I call off frequency and often get 1st or 2nd in the pile.
Missed the March holiday makers going to interesting places to work BERU. Hoping next year will be better – surely can’t be worse.
In my half time effort, How did I do: 4165 points,
| Band | HQ | Total | |
| 3.5 | 10 | 7 | 17 |
| 7 | 51 | 14 | 65 |
| 14 | 94 | 17 | 111 |
| 21 | 14 | 3 | 17 |
| 28 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Total | 170 | 43 | 213 |
Should have got more of the HQ band slots, but maybe they were on when I was off.
Now getting ready for BARTG next weekend – that will hard graft running 2 bands at once and when possible using the 2nd RXs for S&P mults. Less of a walk in park more of a marathon sprint.
73 David G3YYD