The weekend has passed and I’m pleased to report it was really enjoyable, I made my way down to the G6PZ contest station Friday afternoon, getting to the station is super easy and I was in luck with the trains which seemed to be running like clock work! and arrived early so used the time to take some shots of the beach at Weston-super-mare.
MW0CRI operating RTTY
On arrival at the station we started setting up the three operating positions, this year we were going to operate some RTTY too so we setup Win-Test with MMTTY, this was the first time I’d used the MMTTY engine so it was a little bit hit and miss setting up but there seemed to be no issues.
Marconi Day lasted for the whole 24hrs of the 25th of April, and we run it contest style allowing us to work as many as possible and in theory helping those wanting to work as many stations as possible for the awards. Conditions early Saturday morning seemed very poor but at day break 40m soon picked up, and we started to work into Europe at times the pile up never seemed to end either people really wanted to work the station or spotted the pile up and had to get it in the logbook!
Simon (M0CLW)
We also got some reasonably decent runs on 20m Saturday afternoon into North America to my surprise K2DBK took a short recording of me operating you can listen by going to http://k2dbk.com/gb6md.mp3 conditions did seem to go very poor again around 4pm.
Peter (G4MJS)
Saturday evening seemed good we were able to work into JA on 40m CW without too much problem, but 80m SSB was hard work with poor conditions it seemed and lots of noise. Later on though during the last hour 11-midnight was able to get a really good run on 40m into the US and parts of SA, the run just kept going and gave me a serious adrenaline rush and stations were giving 59+ reports.
At the end of the day we made over 3000 QSOs, there was always lots of banter going on in the background and plenty of beer lets hope next year is just as good.
Had a great time.enjoyed the company and beers but peter you could have taken better pic hi.
73 hope to meet you all again
Dai MW0CRI
Dai,
its you lot not smiling! grumpy old bunch 😉
that was wind mate.. 73
Glad you enjoyed the day although from our point of view it was never intended to be a contest as we cannot abide the 59 qrz operations here in Cornwall hi hi
The event was originally conceived by Month G4ZKH and I here in my shack and with 22 under our belt now I guess the idea must have had some merit.
As President of the Cornish Amateur Radio Club I extend our thanks to you for turning up on the day and making the event happen. We are the hub, yes, but without the spokes pour wheel would not get too far so thanks again.
As hyears pass we are finding that instead of having a surplus of operators like we had in the early days of the event we are now actually struggling to get enough to cope with the day, sign of the times plus we are all getting older at 55 I remain one of the younger members of our Club. Hey Ho!
73, CU AGN NXT YR de G4USB