The contest took place at Castle Camps as usual.  During the contest we were contacted by Tony G4NBS, a member of the RSGB VHF Contest Committee, who complained about the signal quality.  From memory, I do not recall the details further.

The December 86 Rad Com mentions "Bad signals reports delaying results publications"  In January 1987 edition of Rad Com several stations were noted as being disqualified, one being G2XV/p, General Rule 19 being cited as the transgression.

I seem to recall that we were using Richard's (G6TUS) BNOS 160w linear, this might be wrong, Cambeam refers to the use of the BNOS in 1985. The driving rig is unknown (but research continues!).  There are some photographs showing contests around this time, perhaps the driving rig can be identified?

The moral of the story is to log any incidents and tests done, if possible get additional signal reports from other nearby stations and log these.  Try to establish that the most likely cause is close proximity or RX overload or, by adjustment of the drive, the signal improvement is agreed by the reporting station.  If agreement cannot be reached at least there is a record of attempts made.  The amount of work necessary to establish a field contest station is considerable, it is a shame that all these efforts seen below came to nought because of failure to carry this out. 

Proper PEP reading meters should be used, a signal compressor should be used to raise the average signal level, not by clipping the output signal by "talking up" using an average reading power meter, the resulting signal will be very wide and deserve comment. The ALC meters should just flicker, not be pinned to the end stop!

All photos dmk except first image, unknown, perhaps DL?. Here we see left to right, Richard, Henry, Howard, Mike, David, Martin, Jonathon and Max conducting.

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