LP Contest 2015

LP Contest 2015.

The day came, cloudy but not raining as forecast and windy but not cold. I arrived by 8 and Paul shortly after. I did not check the antenna before coming and found the 80m dipole had been cut from the centre so had to remake it. I cannot think why I cut it. We installed the mast using a support under the wheel of the car with the aerial to a height of about 10m with an extra support of about 8m on one leg of the 40m dipole. The rest were terminated with long ropes to the ground. Decided to operate from the rear of my car which in spite of the wind turned out to be ok in the sunshine.
I operated for the first hour, then Paul for one hour followed by me for half hour then Paul to lunch at 1300. Paul decided to stay to the end, he was enjoying himself I think, and we restarted again at 1400. This time we operated half hour at a time till the end. This worked well with one of us keeping the Dupe log. Conditions were not good on 80 as we worked only one qso at the start before changing to 40. In total only 18 of the 74 q’s were on 80 and most of these were in late afternoon.  Packed up and home by 1745, tired but we had enjoyed ourselves and the wx was very good but a little windy.
During the contest Murphy made a small visit which could have been a final one as the dot lead to the key went o/c. Luckily it was in the key extension lead and I had a replacement lead. Also Paul had his key, which I did not manage very well, so we said goodbye to Murphy. He had one final go when we could not find the cup to Paul’s flask which turned up on the roof of the car during the breakdown after searching under the cars and the grass around!
We used my FT817 running 2.5w though sent 3w as we were in that section. No ATU needed  as dipoles cut to length. Had to use paper logging as computer screen not readable. Back to basics unlike main rig and computer doing the work. Power came from the car cigar socket.  Keys in use were Benchers and used Pauls keyer with set up memories, ideal for those times when the going was slow.
All in all a most enjoyable day, it was nice to have help setting up and have experienced company.

Ron-G4DDX and Paul-G0WAT.