Category Archives: Contests

Michaelmas Term Update

CUWS entered CQWW SSB at the end of October but sadly we were beaten into second place in our category (Multi-op, 2 stations, England) by the Wisbech Contest Group who had much more space for big antennas.

During the contest we noticed that the shack roof was leaking and we owe a huge vote of thanks to the team of George M1GEO, Dan M0WUT, and Dom M0BLF, led by Rob M0VFC who replaced the entire roof over a couple of November weekends.

CUWS shack with new roof going on

New Roof on CUWS Shack

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the end of term we used the special youth callsign GB24YOTA for a few days and made around 800 QSOs.

M6TZL operating GB24YOTA

M6TZL operating GB24YOTA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

M0IPY operating GB24YOTA

M0IPY operating GB24YOTA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the end of the year we welcomed Henry Mak from the Stephen Perse school to guest operate in the December YOTA Contest.

CUWS Enters 1st 2022 YOTA Contest

The team made 316 QSOs in the 1st round of the 2022 YOTA Contest. Conditions weren’t great during the day and there were very few contest stations on 40m. Most QSOs were made on 20m.

The first shift was Dan M0WUT and Daniel M0TKU.

Then Edwin M0RNN:

Then Charlie M0ZCJ and Nicholas M0NHC.

Mark M0UBS.

And guest op Henry-James M7HJR.

M4A in CQWW SSB Contest

A team of 15 operators including 2 undergraduates, 11 alumni of various vintages, and 2 guests operated M4A in the multi-op single-transmitter category over the last weekend in October. Conditions were excellent with worldwide propagation up to 10m. Approximately 3500 contacts were made for a score of just under 4M points.

Aerials at M4A

CQWW SSB Contest 2019

CUWS entered the major CQWW SSB contest last weekend (26/27 October) in the Multi-operator, Single Transmitter, category. In practice this means two transmitting positions – but one is designated as only being able to contact countries or “zones” that have not yet been contacted on a particular band. The usual 3 element SteppIR Yagi was supplemented with a 5 element 15m Yagi on a 12m SCAM mast, a 4-square phased array for 40m, and a single quarter wave vertical for 80m. The last two antenna systems will be in place for members to use until the end of March (if the vertical parts survive the winter gales).

Conditions were as poor as one would expect at the bottom of the sunspot cycle but we managed 2802 contacts over the 48 hours and are hoping for 1st place in our category again.

Operators included a number of students and recent alumni.

   

 

CQWW CW 2018 (M0WJE)

This year, the weekend of 24/5 November saw the CQWW CW contest. Although CUWS normally enters the SSB version only, my Morse has been progressing steadily and I felt finally ready for a contest…what better opportunity? Since the VP2MUW team of experienced CW ops was returning hours before the contest began, and since in any case I thought building a team to disappoint with my beginner’s operating was a bad idea, I entered the single-operator category from Woop Woop 3.    As a relatively recent licensee, receiving my M0 call in early 2017, I was also eligible for the ‘Rookie’ overlay category. Having set up WinTest for the contest in advance and checking I knew at least vaguely how to drive the shack’s Winkeyer, I left things until Friday; unfortunately, I still had rather a lot of work to do over the weekend, so clearly could not go in for a serious 30+hour stint. I elected to aim for about 10-12 hours operating over the weekend, and chose to enter the 20m QRO class.

I arrived at the shack (later than I would have liked) at around 0845 on Saturday, and began by working the numerous multipliers in Asia before propagation in that direction died; after a couple of hours including my first attempt at running in a contest (at 26wpm or so, extremely leisurely by contrast to some ops—TI7W, for example was running at 43wpm), I decided to go and buy myself a sandwich lunch while waiting for the US path to open properly. On my return, I had a cup of tea and got back to work, soon managing a reasonable run of US stations interrupted only occasionally by frequency-snatchers, only some of whom were warned off with an insistent “QRL QRL”!

I returned at greyline time on Sunday morning to work a few more mults/JAs; in the former I was largely unsuccessful, finding no new zones but a few new countries, but I managed to run through around 50 stations, comprised of many Russian/eastern European stations and a few calls from further afield, including JA.

What I did

  • About 9.5hrs operating over two days
  • 20m high power
  • Logging to Wintest
  • Morse via Wintest macros, sent through Winkeyer
  • Hand keying for some partials and abbreviated CQs etc (which I never got round to programming in) via a Bencher paddle connected to the Winkeyer.
  • FT1000MP with 250Hz filters. DSP minimally used.

What was good

  • Logging was largely successful, though I made a few keyboard errors.
  • Sending exchanges, most callsigns and some partials via Winkeyer.
  • Some partials etc by hand.
  • Running in a contest…it’s stressful but not as bad as I’d feared.

What was bad

  • Copy accuracy: I was able to copy about every other callsign on the first attempt, even at only 27wpm or so. Most callers were considerate enough to slow down to this speed, though a few attempted to work me at >>35wpm (I feel I can estimate this fairly well since I will happily call people QRQ if they are running fast, especially given the predictable exchange in CQWW DX). One or two succeeded. I found myself sending lots of partials. Predictable given my inexperience and rather as I’d expected—sorry to those whose rates suffered from my ineptitude!
  • Hand sending: it’s improving, but I am still prone to make errors when sending by hand at 28wpm (I think I’m slightly better, at least with some messages, at higher speed). On several occasions I released the key too early when sending a short CQ, thus sending “M0W” (three men went to…), so had to correct myself. I also seem to struggle unnecessarily with the humble question mark: never have I sent so many ..–.   . or similar!
  • Run technique to some extent: this was mostly due to the copying issue. Lack of experience once again largely to blame. I was very confused until after the contest by people whose callsign I had thought I’d copied correctly sending some unexpected characters before the exchange; now I realise this was probably “UR”. I was also not always able to establish when I had copied callsigns correctly; credit due to those who patiently sent “N N” when I had it wrong, and “R R” when I had finally cracked it, but less to those who gave their exchanges even though I had not sent their full callsign and then disappeared!
  • Winkeyer occasionally: for some reason, every so often, the keyer speed appeared to jump quite dramatically. I suspect this may be due to the interesting idea of speeding up to send “5NN” as quickly as possible, and somehow periodically failing to slow down again… problem easily solved by wobbling the potentiometer on the front though.

Raw score was 139,050, though I am sure the error rate will be startlingly high (for reasons outlined above). Hopefully I should at least finish with a positive score! Raw score places me 78/145 worldwide, 59/88 in EU and 6/6 in G.

Update: Final score after moderation was 118,104. 5.4% error rate compared to the average of 2.8%; not brilliant, but not as bad as I’d expected! 1st of 3 in G “Rookie QRO 20m single op”—perhaps unsurprisingly—and 11 of 71 in worldwide Rookie QRO (all sub categories). Not as bad as feared!

M0WJE CQWW certificate

 

GP6UW: IOTA contest from Guernsey

GP6UW certificate

William Eustace M0WJE and Dan McGraw M0WUT entered the 2018 RSGB IOTA Contest from Guernsey. This was no cushy operation, however; the excitement began with the journey from the South Coast, made in a 24′ sailing yacht Aphrodite.

I had brought the boat to Poole to allow a better slant on the anticipated SW winds; Dan and the non-radio operator (but keen sailor) Hugo Cheema-Grubb appeared on the quayside at varying times on the evening of 25 July, and all hands turned in—after figuring out how to stow themselves, a tent, a trestle table, two radios, four or five SOTA poles, power supplies, laptops, camping stools, Morse keys and all the other equipment required for a multi-two station in a very small space!

View of Old Harry Rocks, from the outbound Channel crossing.

Under sail off Old Harry Rocks at sunrise, shortly after leaving Poole.

We slipped lines at 0330 and found ourselves off Old Harry Rocks by dawn. The crossing was in beautiful weather but much of it with remarkably little wind, so the deafening roar of the 4hp 2 stroke outboard featured for some hours, and those sitting in the cockpit donned their ear defenders. That evening, Aphrodite arrived at Braye, Alderney—thanks to a tidal miscalculation, just after sunset. After a leisurely breakfast the next morning, the tide was just turning in “the Swinge”, the mildly terrifying gap between Alderney and the off-lying islets, as we set sail once again. The wind was more obliging today, though predictably on the nose, and, helped by the notoriously rapid Channel Islands tides, we reached Guernsey largely under sail.

Beaucette Marina’s boatyard was the operating location chosen, and, when the skipper had recovered from the excitement of the very narrow entrance, the QTH was surveyed: a majestic spot on the cliffs of Guernsey, looking out towards Herm and Alderney. The take-off to Europe was undeniably good, and proximity to salt water combined with ample space for antennas and the operating tent appeared promising. The weather forecast for the contest weekend, with winds  frequently up to gale force and the occasional bit of heavy rain on Sunday, filled us with less enthusiasm—though at least it assured us that the conditions would not risk our feeling unadventurous.

Starting at 0700 on contest day 1, Saturday 28th, we began pushing the gear in trolleys up the steep pontoon ramp and then heaving it up the mud bank onto the cliff. This seemed minimal in difficulty then; by the next morning it was to assume quite a different complexion. The tent was erected in the rising winds, and well guyed; with the help of Paul GU4YBW and Adam MU0WLV, we raised our 20m and 15m antennas, set up the trestle table and equipment within the tent, and, at 1300 (the start of the contest) were [almost!] ready to begin operating.

At the start of the contest exactly, Dan, the CW op, began sending the first of many “CQ TEST”s; as the SSB op, I tried to ensure that the frequency and mode were logged correctly (attempts to get the FT890 to speak to DXLog had failed), then began bellowing into the aether, with spectacularly little result. The “statistics” window grew progressively more depressing from my side, as the CW QSO count mounted rapidly in the marginal conditions. After some time, the SSB rate needle lethargically levered itself away from the stop, but not by much. Dan meanwhile was running at a fine rate, occasionally clasping his hands over his earphones in an attempt to resolve an indistinct number or callsign—and perhaps in the hope of reducing the audio frequency power output of his fellow contester across the tent. Hugo had spent the day exploring the island, and helpfully provided a much-needed and delightful dinner. We abandoned the cliffs for an hour or so to eat, washing down the food with the local Roquette cider that Adam (MU0WLV) had thoughtfully delivered as “contest juice”—or Roquette fuel, as he termed it! Dan, complaining that there were “lots of dots and dashes going round and round in my head, and they all hurt”, made the sensible decisions to retire until 0600 the next morning, given the entry appeared to stand little chance of being competitive; I, being more foolhardy, returned to my three-legged stool and continued shouting into the void. Special thanks to the cheering QSOs with Bernie, W3UR, who worked us on SSB on a couple of band slots—the latter at roughly 0400 LT, in which he presciently asked how the tent was coping with the gale force winds. As it banged, flapped and slatted around my ears, I assured him all was well; as the sun began to stain the sky I made a foray outside to re-erect a partly collapsed antenna, but was pleased to note there were no other casualties. Despite running for at least six hours more, conditions (between local QRM from boat battery chargers, QRN, and generally poor propagation) were hard and 100W of voice went nowhere—I was now, finally, creeping up on Dan’s QSO count from the previous day. At about 0430 it began to rain outside, which presented little bother; unfortunately by 0530 it had begun to rain inside the tent as well, and operating became somewhat more challenging. By 0555 the situation had worsened to the point of being hazardous, and, covering all the equipment with oilskins, I QRX-d just as Dan arrived for the morning shift. Fetching more oilskins and packing away the most valuable equipment, operating resumed for a time, now on one rig only; I was pleased to note that Dan grimaced at the conditions on SSB, suggesting it wasn’t only my inadequacy causing such a pathetic rate, and, as the leaks intensified and a lake on the groundsheet developed alarmingly close to the mains wiring, we decided to go QRT for the contest (at risk of going QRT for good!), on 742 QSOs, mostly on 40, 20, and 15m, with a few on 80m—though I had not bothered to erect the 80m dipole, the FT890’s tuner was quite able to cope with the 40m vertical on 80m, though of course the antenna was doubtless rather inefficient.

M0WUT operating under a tarpaulin in the leaking tent

As the rain poured into the tent, equipment was covered with oilskins and we scaled back to one SSB station.

What, one might ask, of the other crew? Hugo had intended to explore the island that morning. A first hand account from Dan reveals that he rolled over at 0600, silenced his alarm, heard the rain on the cabin roof, remarked “No” and went back to sleep! All hands were soon rallied, though, and the equipment was vacated first to the (mercifully dry) campsite laundry room, then to the boat. After a refreshing few hundred yards’ stroll to admire a cliff fort and pass the time to 0900, we repaired to the restaurant, which had just opened, and had a well-earned Full English breakfast; that evening, the rain having abated, we were treated to a tour of a few of Guernsey’s highlights as unearthed by Hugo’s exploration, before patronising an excellent curry house in St Sampson—virtually the only restaurant in the area open on a Sunday evening.

The accursed tent was stowed in the marina skip, and we set off for Alderney. From here, passage back to the UK was smooth and thankfully uneventful, though crossing the shipping lanes mid-Channel—likened by one watcher of an online AIS display to crawling across the M25—proved entertaining as always. I dozed down below for a while, and in my absence a log entry reports “Playing Frogger with container ships.” We dropped anchor off Sandown, Isle of Wight at 0330 on 1 August, and pottered into Aphrodite‘s home port in Chichester Harbour later that morning, after some much needed sleep!

Rigs were a Yaesu FT890 (kindly loaned by G3ZAY), and Dan’s Elecraft K3, used with paddle and Winkeyer.

Photo of the crew exploring Alderney.

The crew had an afternoon ashore in Alderney to walk round some of the island. From left, M0WUT, Hugo Cheema-Grubb, M0WJE.

2018 GP6UW QSL Card

2018 GP6UW QSL Card

 

William Eustace, 23/9/18

 

M4A Contests

The following is the latest list of contests in which the callsign M4A may be used, as issued by Ofcom on 18 December 2007 in the G6UW NoV. M4A may only be used by members of the club.

  • ARRL DX CW
  • ARRL DX SSB
  • ARRL 1.8MHz DX CW only
  • ARRL 28MHz Multimode
  • CQ WPX CW
  • CQ WPX RTTY
  • CQ WPX SSB
  • CQ World Wide CW
  • CQ World Wide RTTY
  • CQ World Wide SSB
  • CQ World Wide 160 CW
  • CQ World Wide 160 SSB
  • IARU Championship Multimode
  • IOTA Multimode
  • WAE DX CW
  • WAE DX RTTY
  • WAE DX SSB
  • ARRL RTTY Roundup
  • BARTG RTTY
  • IARU 50MHz Trophy Multimode
  • IARU 144MHz Trophy Multimode
  • IARU 432MHz to 248GHz Multimode
  • March 144 and 432MHz
  • May 432MHz to 248GHz Contest
  • Movember Marconi Memorial 144MHz
  • Russian DX Contest

M0TDG: CQWW CW 2006

For some years now, whilst CUWS has been regularly fielding teams for the major phone contests in the amateur radio contesting calendar, there has been little representation in CW contests. This is regarded as a shame by some but it also gives an opportunity to those who are active on the CW parts of the bands to use the G6UW shack both for some contesting practice and to give their own callsigns a QRO airing and to try and nab a few new ones for their country totals.

CQWW CW is generally regarded as the biggest CW contest of the year and there are many expeditions to rare and semi-rare countries all over the world. Often, these expeditions involve taking large antennas and amplifiers to these countries making them easy pickings when combined with G6UW’s large antennas. After some negotiations with other CUWS members keen to have a go in the 2006 contest, it was decided that I should have the Saturday to work what I could.

The original intention had been to travel up on the Friday night and be ready for the start of the contest. It became clear in the week leading up to the contest that this would not be feasible as work committments meant that an arrival in Cambridge would not be possible before 2100 and an 80m antenna would have to be set up in the dark as there is no permanent one currently at the shack. Taking this into account, I decided that it was best to get a good night’s sleep at home on the Friday then head up the next morning. Waking the next morning, I discovered that there was a serious accident on the route to Cambridge I normally use. I waited a little for this to clear then headed north.

The shack is pretty well set up for getting on the air with win-test and the rig interfaces permanently ready. In addition to this, I had use of a microham microkeyer to provide keying from the keyboard.

As time was short and the main aim was to expand my DXCC totals, I decided to go for Single-Op All Band Assisted High Power so that I could use the packet to sniff out the juicier stations. Things started off well with lots of DX audible even though winds forced me to keep the tower wound down. However, within 20 minutes of starting, a squally shower swept through accompanied by thunder and lighting. The only thing to do was to unplug everything in the shack and power down until the storm had passed. This took a good 40 minutes and there were several lightning strikes in the fields surrounding the shack. Once the lightning had passed, things were back up and running again quickly. Conditions were reasonable for the most part and 15m was open to the US and other parts of the world. The best DX worked on 15m was VK9AA for an all time new country at around 1330z. Small runs were possible to the states at times but these did not sustain for very long and the band opened and closed several times. There were also problems with the microkeyer at times which meant some of the keying had to be sent manually. The problem was eventually traced to RF getting into the USB lead from the PC to the microham and a well wrapped ferrite ring seemed to cure this.

In the end, I didn’t operate too long after sunset due to other things coming up and the final totals were as follows:

Band QSOs DXCC Zones points
10m 5 5 3 11
15m 55 43 19 136
20m 53 50 20 114
40m 26 26 8 36
80m 0 0 0 0
160m 0 0 0 0
Total 139 124 50 51678

For only a few hours work, this seemed reasonably successful with a reasonable score and a total of 82 unique DXCC worked which included 7 all time new entities and numerous new band/countries worked. Others also reported successes in the contest with good conditions on the higher bands (although sadly there was not much on 10m).

There is an increasing interest in CW among the active members who join our contest entries and hopefully, it will not be too long until we can mount a major multi-op entry into a big CW contest again.