Friday, February 5, 2021

UKEICC 80m SSB, PACC rehearsal

 Like last year I find this contest a great way for a small rehearsal before the PACC. The goal is to make as many contacts as possible without any faults.

Original the plan was to call till 20:25UTC then do a 10 minute S&P to return running till the end. It didn't work out this time...

First 20 minutes was very difficult. I actually thought I started at the wrong time. I didn't hear anyone calling in the contest. So, I double checked the time. It was right, but the QRM was very high. A few layers of stations across the 80m band. Impossible to find a quiet place to call. So I just tried and started to run, but it went wrong after a few minutes. I could not hear the stations that were replying to me due to big splattering. Lost 10 minutes searching for a quiet spot, even the spectrum display didn't help this time. Finally I found 3707KHz as best frequency and worked a steady flow of stations till the end of the contest. Didn't do S&P this time, so I missed the far away stations. Just didn't have the time for it.

I had the hackgreenSDR online again as well and could see my trace getting stronger between 20:30-21:00UTC. It did reflect on the QSO rate for shure.

From the 67 contacts made 66 were valid. I'm curious what fault I made. Will update this post as soon as I have the results.

The PACC 2021 contest will be on 13 and 14 February.

Update 07-Feb-2021:

UKEICC 80m SSB contest using 6 char grids

Date: 

Mode: SSB

Assisted: NON-ASSISTED

Power: Low


Callsign: PE4BAS

Operator: PE4BAS

Locator: JO33JK


Total QSOs: 67


Potential Points: 193

Actual points: 185.24

Points per QSO: 2.88

Longest scoring QSO: 1052.21 km with EI3ER

Highest points QSO: 8.00 points with G6AY


DUPES

_____

No Dupes!


NIL

____

No NILs!


Busted reports

______________

EI9JU - Should have been IO65GA


Busted Calls 

____________

No busted calls!


I always repeat the locator so it is not clear to me why the locator from EI9JU slipped through as a fault. But overall I think I did a good job.

3 comments:

Tjeerd, PA3GNZ said...

Hallo Bas, volgend weekend ga ik ook mee doen met de PACC. 2 jaar vanuit huis met 5 watt. Ik ben benieuwd.

73, Tjeerd

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Tjeerd, ik doe dit jaar ook mee in de QRP sectie. Dus 5W. Ik ben ook erg benieuwd....heb eerder meegedaan in de QRP sectie dus weet dat het niet hard gaat. Het zal meer S&P worden. 73, Bas

MadDogMcQ said...

You did a fantastic job Bas. I really do need to get involved in some Contesting. I was going to ask someone at my Radio Club to give me some experience and guidance, but the LockDown has prevented it all year. Perhaps I should just get stuck into it myself - I just don't want to be an annoyance to others though).

73, Tom, M7MCQ
www.m7mcq.com