This year we decided to go back to the Low Power section of the contest reasoning that we are more competitive as well as the gear and power requirements being more manageable for our Club.  Also issues like mutual interference are reduced considerably and the shorter 16 hours total operating time on each band with 1 hour minimum breaks allow for more time for repairs/alterations and sleep!

So that we did "something different" we entered 2 stations, the A on 6m, 4m and 2m with the B on 2m, 70cm and 23cm.

The "A" stations operated well and for their full allowed times. Mark and Elizabeth really enjoyed the 6m operation.

The "B" entry 2m station was only operated when the main entry was on rest period.  Mike Addlesee M0BLP did a good job in a couple of hours during the night on the "B" 2m station but we did not manage to stay awake and operate for all the hours that we could.  There was a lot of activity on 70 cm and next year we must aim to run the full 16 hours.  23cm had problems at the start when most of the activity was around, the ppt line was disconnected from the linear up the mast.

The site will NOT be the limiting factor to the final results position.  Club members and guests, as the photos show, had a really great fun weekend despite the cold weather.   Well done everybody for all the hard work.

Thank you to Martin for the photos as acknowledged.

Stop Press - Results published

So, how did we do? Well, runner up with the A station and 9th with the B station in the overall results table.  Band leader on 6m for the A with runner up on 23cm for the B stations. This is just a fantastic result for the club and as far as I know, the best the club has ever done in a National contest.

We got some excellent publicity in the write-up in Rad Com as well.

With some modifications to the various transverter crystal frequencies, sorting the very intermittent fault with the 225 and making sure that the problems we had with the 23cm and 70cm stations (both avoidable p.s.u. problems), we just could come 1st and 2nd if the club want to repeat this format next year.