GT8IOM and the CQ WW DX Contest 2011
It’s that time again!
Contest weekend coming and I get to play radio again!
And as still not able to play from home yet, I jumped at the chance to get on the radio and make a few contacts, this time though I knew that we were going to get a complete lack of sleep.
The contest in question was the CQ Worldwide DX SSB Contest lasting an entire weekend (48 hours), the venue, Mike Jones’s (GD4WBY) shack, the crew, though this time we will not have a lot of the usual rabble helping out due to illness and other commitments, we at least had three of us to man the radio over the 48 hour period. So the crew this time is:
I turned up very late on Friday night armed with enough bags of junk food to require the use of a trailer and another car with a roof rack! Typical me going overboard, but you can’t say no to the odd Pot Noodle and a 36 bag of crisps for breakfast!
We aimed to start dead on midnight, but as per typical us, we got in the shack, tuned up the radio, and then worked out we were 1:10 early due to not thinking about UTC difference, opps, but at least we were ready!
When we finally got it right and the contest started at 1.00 am local time it turned out to be slow going for the first couple of hours, but that said it looked promising with some nice contacts coming through on both 80 and 40 meters.
Mike Jones (GD4WBY) taking the first shift on 80 meters
With Mike turning in early I maned the fort till around 5 am when I was suppressed to see Ralf open the door, so handing over to him in the early hours I grabbed some sleep.
Ralf (GD4IHC) working his way through the pileups on 15 meters….
There were some really nice times throughout the two days of operation, especially on 10 meters, with strong signals coming in from all corners of the globe, and with the dwindling supplies of Crisps and Pot Noodles, the nice pileups on both 15 and 10 meters we had no time for food anyway!
Most memorable contacts were all the VK stations that came through on 15 and 10 meters, and especially coming in strong over the top of most of the European stations calling.
The station in Afghanistan (T6RH) was a real bonus and greatly appreciated.
We had a break to watch the first Indian Formula 1 Grand Prix, which was a nice break to give our ears a rest, although personally, the race itself was way too boring!
The Crew Relaxing and watching the first Indian Formula 1 Grand Prix….
Thats Mike (GD4WBY) playing with his banana, Me (MD0MDI) in the middle drinking my mug of coffee, and finally Ralph (GD4IHC) eating a salad!
I started failing late on Sunday, and we managed to clear 1000 contacts (actually 1070) by the time I called it a day, having to get the borrowed car back to it’s owner before I was too tired to drive it, so I left Mike manning the mic till the end where he managed to bring in the total contacts made to 1105, which was really good for an event maned by three operators just having fun, maybe next time we will hammer down and give it a real bashing, but for just a fun event, a good time was had by all, and hopefully Mike did not get too annoyed with us all, well me actually!
We played radio, we had fun, we eat too many crisps, and we had a laugh, and after, isn’t that what this hobby is all about!
Me (MD0MDI) taking a break from the Pot Noodles and Crisps to get on the radio…
Maybe I can do this from home one day!
Please note that the information below will change over the next week as I am waiting for Mike to pass me the completed logbook which will have a few more contacts on it… So please keep popping back and I will keep pestering him so I can get this page finished……..
Anyway, here are the stats for this fun weekend….
First off an approximation of the scores as worked out by UcxLog:
[singlepic id=439 w=320 h=240 float=center]
We managed to work 85 Countries:
[singlepic id=441 w=320 h=240 float=center]
And the graph showing where we had a break, and the QSO count workload, easily showing that Sunday was the better day for us, especially as we camped out on frequencies for most of the time…
And finally a map of all stations worked…. (Click on the image to download a full size one).
