What a difference in the weather compared to July. We suffered from the heat and the tent flaps had to be raised for extra ventilation.

The station had a different equipment line-up this year. Mike M0BLP had purchased a FT225rd with a valve Linear earlier and after some modification and repairs to the linear at the G6KWA shack the beast was let loose at around 350 W pep. It is capable of much more but Mark worried about the blue glow at night through the ventilation holes and the voltage drop from the generator limited the HT and Heater voltages.  So in the interests of good signals we kept the drive down.  To keep a check on signal quality we had Martin Cranage G8OFA at home in Salisbury keeping a check on us throughout the weekend.

The aerials were also different.  We now run a pair of 9 ele Tonnas which give a wider forward pattern and a LOWER front to back ratio, very helpful for working inter-G off the back of the beam.  Also a phased pair of home brew Big wheel aerials as per the ARRL designs from the 60's.  These had really good omni-directional performance some 10db(at worst) down on the main array.

The club Ft225rd at last showed the very intermittent fault that has been suspected for some time. Mike M0BLP kindly went home and got his unit which we used for the rest of the contest. The reserve club linear and FT221 were used in various combinations to prove the fault existed and in the meantime keep the station on the air.

We await the results but I think we have done quite well.  This was yet another well supported and very popular weekend. Thanks for all the hard work and to Daniel for producing the operator schedule board.

Thank you to Mirek Sutty for the photos as acknowledged

Results

We came 8/11 in the main Multi-operator section. Considering this is big boys section this is a really good result. The adjudicator writes that the there were several bad signal reports and with conditions being very good there was a lot of QRM. We were not penilised for the complaint made against us, because of the correct logging of the complaint and actions taken at the time including asking for and logging good signal reports.

He further states "Given the level of activity, logging standards were remarkably high with the leading stations losing well under 2% of their scores". I am very pleased to report that we have tightened up on the poor logging. We lost 12 contacts with a total of 2141 points, just over 2%. Well done to the first time operators.