UKEICC 80m SSB contest - SDR experiment

 Once and a while I participate in a UKEICC 80m SSB contest which is a one hour contest with very fast publication of results. I wrote about this before a couple of times. It is really fun and great for practising or developing contest strategies.

There is a change this year, the exchange is no longer a 4 digit locator (JO33 for me) but 6 digits. It's a longer exchange but calculating the distances is more precise and fairer. In this contest accurate logging is important, penalties are given for wrong logging.

It is fun if you win of course, but since most participants are from the UK and Ireland someone from Germany, Sweden or even Lithuania does clearly have an advantage. In the Netherlands we're simply too close. However, for me it is not important to win. I just want to test my abilities and experiment with new ideas which I can use in other contests.

This time I was thinking about the spectrum display I use in N1MM+, it is excellent and a great advantage you have with a SDR receiver. You easily find a nice quiet spot on the band to give CQ and see were other stations are. But of course, finding such a quiet spot can't tell you if it is quiet in the DXCC you want to reach. Since most of the participant are in the UK I thought to find a SDR in the UK to see if I was transmitting on a quiet part of the band without much QRM and splatter, I did choose RAF hackgreenSDR in Nantwich, UK to listen/view.

Above the N1MM+ contestsoftware. At the left you see the spectrum display from the webSDR on top, below is my own from the IC-7300. As you can see my signal was quite strong in the UK. That will say, till 20:30 it was, then it vanished and I didn't see it again. Immidiatly noticed my QSO rate dropped dramatically. Whatever antenna you use or how much power, it doesn't matter you see. If there is no propagation it's over....

The second experiment, something I do most of the time with unique exchanges is repeat the exchange I receive. I repeated every locator I heard to be shure I was logging the right exchange. 

The nice thing is that every participant gets a nice report next day with results and more info like faults you make, penalties etc. This is called a UBN report which stands for Unique, Busted, Not In Log.

This was my report partly (I removed the complete log).

UKEICC 80m SSB contest using 6 char grids
Date: 04/11/2020
Mode: SSB

Assisted: NON-ASSISTED
Power: Low

Callsign: PE4BAS
Operator: PE4BAS
Locator: JO33JK

Total QSOs: 47

Potential Points: 147
Actual points: 147.00
Points per QSO: 3.13
Longest scoring QSO: 2251.12 km with UT2II
Highest points QSO: 6.00 points with LY4ZZ


DUPES
_____
No Dupes!


NIL
____
No NILs!


Busted reports
______________
No busted reports!


Busted Calls 
____________
No busted calls!

You see, it helps when you double check. No faults. I obtained 4th place in my section in the end. Well actually 3rd, a shared place with DL2SWR. I don't care actually, I had fun. The two things I wanted to try worked out well.