From: Nick G4FAL
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2021 17:35:19 GMT
On my first trip to St Kitts in 2008, I had a kidney stone and a night on pethidine in the local hospital, followed by moving from my original location which was crazy noisy, to a villa on a sugar plantation to operate in the contest. After all the health trauma I fired the radio up in the contest and could hear nothing. I started calling CQ at 10am UTC and was immediately completely inundated with VE, VK and ZL callers – quite moving.
My trip to Montserrat in 2010 was also memorable – one of the nicest places I have ever been. The lovely Gingerbread Hill villa with integrated telescopic tower, had another flat underneath in which a couple of American World Bank representatives were staying. The Governor’s St Patrick’s Day celebration at his residence coincided with my stay and the Americans had an invitation; of course they needed a chauffeur to attend with them! At the “do” I got to meet the Director of the Volcano Observatory and his family, and consequently got up close and personal with the volcano – completely fascinating. The radio was OK – my best ever score in Beru, but only 2nd place!
This year, thankfully no idiot pranksters like Don suffered, but some rather poor HF conditions with which to contend. Running an HQ station has added interest because there comes with it a responsibility to QSY around the bands to help the keener UK entrant pick up bonuses. In fact when UK stations who I knew I could work on 10m called and already had 100 QSOs or so, I generally volunteered to QSY for them, but not always successfully. 15 UK entrants worked GB5CC on five bands. No 10m QSOs outside the UK but the following were four band non-UK: 5B4WN 5Z4VJ 9H1PI VE3EJ VE3JM VE9AA VE9ML VK6LW VK6VZ VY2ZM XL3A & ZF2CA. Likely, the winning station will be from this list of 12 non-UK and the leading UK station from my 15.
Memorable moments from 2021: firstly, some nice LP QSOs with ZL on 20m quite late on Saturday and secondly, a rewarding marginal QSO with VK4WIA on 40m to complete the VK HQ number sequence.
Taking out the non-HQ UK QSOs, I end up with about 320, including some dupes, similar to Don. It will be interesting to see how others got on as there were others who were dual-CQing on 40 and 80 when I decided to have a break for a couple of hours in the night. Looking at my QSO rates from two years ago, I decided that 3 hours’ sleep was more valuable than 20 QSOs and I might find the same stations later anyway. Ron GW3YDX, running GW6XX was consistently on the same serial numbers as me, so it will be interesting to see who scores highest after adjudication. You might find my log entries for our mutual QSOs amusing?
QSO: 14012 CW 2021-03-13 1230 GB5CC 599 171 HQ GW6XX 599 173 HQ
QSO: 21013 CW 2021-03-13 1245 GB5CC 599 193 HQ GW6XX 599 194 HQ
QSO: 3507 CW 2021-03-13 1821 GB5CC 599 434 HQ GW6XX 599 437 HQ
QSO: 7008 CW 2021-03-14 0034 GB5CC 599 688 HQ GW6XX 599 688 HQ
QSO: 28030 CW 2021-03-14 0954 GB5CC 599 764 HQ GW6XX 599 760 HQ
I thought that the lack of travellers was somewhat compensated for by the number of HQs this time. I worked G3DR G6XX GD6XX GI6XX GM3DR GM6XX GW6XX, VO1RAC VA2RAC VA3RAC VE5RAC VE7RAC VE9RAC VY1RAC, VK1WIA VK2WIA VK3WIA VK4WIA VK5WIA VK6WIA VK7WIA, ZL6HQ ZL6HQ/2 ZL6HQ/3 & ZL6HQ/4, which including me, makes 26 HQs (did I miss any?). I am not hugely happy with “GB5CC” as a callsign as nobody expects the “B” and I got loads of G6HCC responses which then led to confusion with high serial numbers – also GB calls are not very DXCC compatibly; we might rethink for next year but I suggest that 8 HQs for the UK is a proportionate number for the nations that host the contest. You might like to operate as an HQ in a future Commonwealth Contest, as it isn’t something for the same people to do every year, and if so please email me at the address below, or Stew GW0ETF QTHR.
I had similar Wintest false dupe problems to Don with ZL6HQ/* but also with VK*WIA and some other QSOs came up as dupes when they were not. I think the SO2R setup in Wintest perhaps confuses the two bands that are in use. The summary is as below not including the score because the Wintest calc is meaningless for an HQ.
BAND QSO DUP DXC HQ POINTS BONUS AVG
——————————————–
80 188 5 20 13 335 920 6.68
40 250 9 26 21 535 1360 7.58
20 230 6 26 18 560 1320 8.17
15 56 0 12 2 90 360 8.04
10 20 1 2 1 15 60 3.75
——————————————–
TOTAL 744 21 86 55 1535 4020 7.47
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Many thanks to all the guys who operated HQs on behalf of the RSGB:
G6XX – G3PJT Bob
GD6XX – MD0CCE Bob
GI6XX – GI4DOH Richard
GM6XX – GM3WOJ Chris
GW6XX – GW3YDX Ron
G3DR – G3LET Peter
GM3DR – GM3WUX Terry
73 Nick G4FAL