20th Oct. 2013 UK AFS Contest
Conditions for this contest did not seem very good to me with only one short opening to Italy. I0FHZ seemed surprised to be called by a station in the UK and came back to me in his native tongue, tricky for me as my Italian is non-existent. Trying to work out letters in a call sign is difficult with phone when strong accents are present. This is one of the reasons I prefer CW as a mode.
Six meters is not normally a very good band for me as I appear to be quite deaf, receiving far better reports than I give out during the UKAC's. For this contest I changed the antenna from 3 elements to a 4 element beam and certainly noticed a difference in the angle of reception. I also changed the feeder over from my normal RG214 to Ecoflex15 and also ran a preamp next to the radio (not at the mast head). The last hour was still very slow though. None of the excitement that runs right up to the wire that you get on the UKAC's.
As can be seen on the map most of the qso's were as my normal UKAC standard with the one I0FHZ standing alone for good dx. I ended up calling CQ a bit high in the band (50.256 MHz) as the lower part of it was so crowded. I hope that didn't make it difficult for operators to find me. Also power levels are much higher in this contest compared to the Tuesday evening contests so front end overload has to be taken into consideration.
I tried calling in CQ in CW a few times just to relieve the boredom but got no takers. The other continental station that I worked was PA4VHF which was harder work than the Italian.
We will now have to see how the rest of the Country faired and what damage the man with the red pen does to my score!
Thanks to Bob, M1MHZ, for the loan of the antenna and preamp. My points go to Spalding & District Amateur Radio Society (SDARS). I hope you all did well.
73 de Jim G0HGH
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