Martlesham DX & Contest Group

CQWW SSB 1996 from England as M6T

This page gives overview information of the station and antennas. Thanks to Andy Cook, G4PIQ for the soap box comment.

Picture Gallery of the station and operators

I have put the photos of the station on a separate page. This should allow those of us without T1 links to see this page more easily. Feel free to see the op's and station here.

The final M6T Summary for 1996

The breakdown can be found here.

                    CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 1996


      Call: M6T                      Country:  England
      Mode: SSB                      Category: Multi Multi

      BAND     QSO   QSO PTS  PTS/QSO   ZONES COUNTRIES


      160      969      933     0.96      9      67
       80     1749     2288     1.31     26     108
       40     1838     2462     1.34     31     131
       20     2650     5868     2.21     40     173
       15     1651     3856     2.34     35     170
       10      323      430     1.33     22      80
     ---------------------------------------------------

     Totals   9180    15837     1.73    163     729  =>  14,126,604



All reports sent were 59(9), unless otherwise noted.

               Martlesham DX & Contest Group,  M6T
               


160m
FT1000D + PA. 40m vertical + Inverted V dipole @ 30m + Beverages
Ops : G4IFB + G4BWP

80m
FT1000D + PA. 4 square + Delta Loop @ 27m.
Ops : K1XX + G0WCW

40m
FT1000D + PA. 3 element full size @ 30m + 402CD @ 25m + Beverages
Ops : G4VMM + G4WFR

20m
IC775 + PA. 205BA @ 30m + stacked 204CDs @ 18m / 30m
Ops : G4BUO, G3VHB, G4BWP

15m
FT1000D + PA. Extended 155BA @ 25m + stacked extended 155BAs @ 18m / 30m
Op : G4PIQ

10m
FT1000MP + PA. 105BA @ 25m + stacked 105BAs @ 22m / 30m
Ops : G0AEV + G0KRL

Multipliers & Support by G4BAH, G0WCW, G0AFH, G0HSS, G4AXX and G4KNO.

Story/Soap Box - by Andy Cook, G4PIQ

As usual we had an interesting contest and as usual we have found areas where we could do better! The new call was good (used to be G0KPW), but conditions weren’t!

We do the whole contest field-day style, and a couple of weeks before the contest it became clear that two of the fields which we normally use to set out antennas were planted with corn, or were not clear of maize. This meant that we had to compress all the antennas into quite a small space, and meant that we had some worse inter-station problems than we have had in previous years.

Some very high winds were forecast for the Sunday of the contest, and when these arrived they turned the big 40m yagi into a very interesting shape - it uses 6m fibreglass fishing rods as the element ends and these really do bend! This also meant that we couldn’t turn that antenna - even a Create RC5B won’t hack that! Both the 40m antennas ended up pointing in completely different directions to where the rotators said! Throughout the Sunday morning, you could look out of the trailer from which we operate, see the bushes bending over, pray that all the guy stakes were firmly knocked into the ground, and feel very glad that we had spent some time putting new guy ropes on many of the towers! Luckily, we had advance warning of the 75mph+ winds forecast for the Monday night, and we were able to lower the towers at the end of the contest, and get all but the 10m stack completely disassembled before the big storm struck that night. It survived OK - the only damage we sustained was to an element on the big 40m yagi on the Monday morning.

From this far north, conditions stank - certainly on Saturday. On the first night, the low bands had a really tough time, typified by almost no sign of the US on 160. Breaking pile-ups against the guys further east and south on 15 and 20 on Saturday morning was tremendously difficult, and I knew we were in trouble when the USA opening on 15m on Saturday turned up skewed path (255 degrees or so). One of the guys posted a WWV spot showing the A index at 8 - it sounded more like it was 48. At least 20 was able to manage a reasonable stateside run.

Sunday was much better - on 15 there were a few more JAs about, but no run, but the US opening was much better, though only 2 stations worked from zone 3, but 20 was still able to bash away at the US.

10m had a real hard time. This is the first time in 4 - maybe 5 years that we have not achieved 5BDXCC - many openings were extremely short, but I guess we will just have to accept that we caught all we could hope for.

Operator List for 1996

• G4BAH - Bob Carpenter (Team Leader)
• K1XX - Charlie Carroll (80m operator)
• G4VMM - Steve Tidmarsh (40m operator)
• G3VHB- Chris Swallow (20m operator)
• G4BUO- Dave Lawley (20m operator)
• G4PIQ - Andy Cook (15m operator!)
• G4BWP - Fred Handscombe (operated on just about every band at some point!)
• G0KRL - Ian Capon (10m operator)
• G0WCW - Darren Hatcher (80m operator)
• G0AFH - Ian Burns (Support)
• G4WFR - Richard Cooper (40m operator)
• G0HSS - Phil Smeaton (Support)
• G4SWX - John Regnault (Support)
• G4AXX - Mark Marsden (Support)
• G4KNO - Andy (Support)
• G4IFB - Gary Hinson (160m operator)
• G0AEV - Steve (10m operator)

Site Layout

The diagram below shows the layout of the aerials in relation to the shack.

Key:

A = 80 metre four square	H = 15 metre 5 element yagi
B = 40 metre 3 element yagi	I = 10 metre 5 over 5 yagi stack
C = 160 metre 1/4 wave vertical	J = 20 metre 5 element yagi
D = 10 metre 5 element yagi	K = 160 metre beverage SE to NW
E = 40 metre 2 element yagi	L/M = 40 metre beverage SW to NE
F = 15 metre 5 over 5 yagi stack	N = 80 metre delta loop
G = 20 metre 4 over 4 yagi stack	O = 160 metre dipole

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©1996-99 Darren Hatcher