Planning for the 2008 CQ WPX Contest

Plans are underway for my operating in the 2008 CQ WPX Contest (SSB).

So near end of March I shall be flying down to Nice, France to visit my Uncle who is also a Radio Amaetur.

I will be taking part using his equipment and my callsign as F/MØTZO (first time in a foreign country as a Ham as well) as a Single Operator. This means I can operate upto 36 hours during the 48 hour contest. Wonder how much I can actually do??

This will not be a go all out to win entry, but more to operate from different location and practise my contesting skills.

My uncle has an Icom IC-737. (www.rigpix.com/icom/ic737.htm)

I will of course do some casual non-contest operating whilst there and may also build a SoftRock TxRx 20m kit.

As internet will be available I will be updating this blog, my other blog with non-amateur radio stuff, and my gallery with photos.

432MHz UKAC

Tonight after local net had finished I went up to 432MHz to work a few station in the 432MHz UKAC contests.

Operated for about 40 minutes and worked 6 stations. Not mega numbers, but I gave a few points away and as I only ran 20w and that was into a vertical I am not upset with results.

Was more to give me something to do than watch TV all evening.

QSOs = 6
Mults = 2
Longest distance = 44km
Total Score = 202 points

More info on RSGB VHF/UHF contests available at www.vhfcc.org

Plan for future:-
Buy 70cm Beam & Rotator. Install in Loft with 2m ZL Beam.

Operating at M2W for CQ Worldwide 2007 Phone Contest

Over the weekend of 27-28th October 2007 I was at the Whitton Amateur Radio Group for the CQ Worldwide 2007 Phone Contest. I was actually there from 6pm Friday night until about 1am Monday morning.

This contest we had a more organised feel and early on we could see that we were doing better than we did in 2006. But this could also be due to running as a Multi-2 station when in 2006 we operated as Multi-Single.

We still had 2 radios, but the 2nd station could operate anything, not just multipliers and could call CQ as well.

We had a set schedule for operators and this was filled out more than 2006.

Like 2006 we had some guest operators. Vlad UA9FAR did a remarkably well. So how did the club do???

 

Year QSO’s Points Countries Zones Score
2007 Details 3183 4340 424 96 1,326,274
2006 Details 1738 2589 379 93 1,222,008
2005 Details 1634 2852 347 92 1,252,028
2002 Details
(Crawley)
2718 5149 349 92 2,270,709

Bold equals Best score in that category