Thursday, March 7, 2019

UKEICC SSB 80m contest 6 March review

Event: UKEICC 80m SSB - 3
Section:  Single Operator Low Power SSB
Logger: N1MM+ newest version
Station: Icom IC-706 MK2G 100W
Antenna 1: Inverted-V apex @12m

Have I told you that I really like the fast and easy format of this contest? It's one of my most favorite contests since it takes only 1 hour of your precious time and you already know the score and outcome next day. You can enter as single operator but the score can also count for a team. More info can be found at https://www.ukeicc.com/ there is also a CW part if you like.
This contest is ideal for beginners but fun as well for the experienced operators.

I had troubles to find a clean frequency the first 25 minutes due to heavy splatter and QRM on the band. But when I finally did find one the QSO rate was up and rising. 60 QSO were made, however I made one typing error I guess and one German station didn't know his locator. Actually the German station told me he had no locator. I told him every place on earth has a locator....Anyway, I should have typed a few dashes but entered a "0" for the missing locator so the QSO didn't count. Learned something for next time.

Distances give most points in this contest but unfortunately almost all stations were within 1000km from my QTH, best distance was with F8ABB which gave me 1196 points. My final place in the low power section was 2 with only 58 counting contacts. I really had a fun hour of contesting and will certainly try to participate again at 3 April.

Another fun thing happened, I had a German station calling CQ DX on my CQ frequency after being there already for 20 minutes. I told him to QSY since the frequency was in use. But he did call CQ again. I didn't want to QSY for this and asked him friendly to QSY but he resisted since he wanted to know what contest it was....after I told him and what time it would stop (18 min left). He told me he would wait. Never heard him again... Strange thing since for me at least it is a rule to always ask 2 times if a frequency is in use...

2 comments:

Photon said...

Sounds like an ideal contest for contest-haters like me! Very well done in your achievement. I might try it with a full 80m dipole from the field shack in April. Maybe see you then?

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Why participating in a contest when you hate it? It's a contradiction ;-) Or do you want to experience this to see what it is? Curious....
73, Bas