June 17th 23 Cms UKAC

23 Cms is a fairly new band for me and it is one that takes some getting used to. Not only do you operate the radio but you also have to arrange skeds using KST. It certainly adds another dimension to Contest operation.

Being fairly new to the band it should be quite easy to better your last score and so far things have been going in the right direction. This was certainly a personal best result for me. It wasn't down to the number of QSO's but to the number of multiplier squares worked - a total of 15 which I was very pleased with.

There was a lot of deep QSB on most distant signals with total fade out at some points so some perseverance was required on both ends of the contact.

I was pleased to say that CW played a small part n pulling in some of the weaker signals. Certainly G3YPQ/p in IO70SS would never have been worked on phone. I gave him a 529 and I received a 449 so it just goes to show how useful CW is in difficult conditions.

I run 10 Watts to a 55 ele Tonna up at 12 meters agl so low power but with high gain. A very sharp antenna so constant tweaking of beam heading made more difficult by QSB made it all quite hard work but most enjoyable.

There were a few SDARS stations on including G4YHF, G4ODA, G4NBR and G4KIY. Strangely I did not hear G4ODA all evening despite the fact that we are fairly close to each other.

73 es tnx fer all points.