Today, Phil M0DEG and myself entered the CW leg of the RSGB's 80m Affilliated Societies Contest as G3PYE. Today's contest forms part of the AFS Super League that the Camb-Hams are taking part in, encompassing contests from 160m to 70cm.
Neither of us had entered a CW contest in a serious way before - we'd both done a little casual search & pounce in the likes of CQWW CW, but never tried to run, and never actually gone for a competitive entry.
CW is something I've been wanting to improve for some time - I've periodically spent time practising, but life always seems to get in the way before I actually become competent! Phil is somewhat better than me, but it's similarly a relatively new skill for him.
Having set up in plenty of time, and with the (surprising!) absence of any technical difficulties, we started the contest in search & pounce mode to get warmed up. An hour in, we dared to hit the F1 key for the first time - "CQ G3PYE TEST"! Thankfully, no-one replied the first time :-).
Thereafter, we managed a steady run at about 60 QSOs per hour, and between the pair of us, we managed to copy most stations reasonably quickly - but many thanks to everyone who was patient with us if we didn't get it right the first time!
The occasional pile-ups were an interesting challenge, normally resulting in blank looks all round:
"Did you get any of that?"
"Nope."
"Me neither. There's probably a G3 in there though..."
[Sends "G3?"]
"Oh yes. All good."
We finished the contest with 176 in the log, less a couple of dupes, and no doubt more than a few errors that we'll lose in adjudication, but with smiles on both our faces, and thoroughly exhausted after four hours of intense concentration.
As an aside, this morning also saw some work at the G6UW shack - the rotator cable for the main tower had become caught under a guying lug when the tower was wound down, and snapped when we then wound it up.Unfortunately, this meant we couldn't rotate the beams into the right orientation to be able to tilt the tower over. Gavin, M1BXF leant me his climbing harness, and a quick repair was made at the top of the tower, before heading off for coffee before going our separate ways to prepare for the AFS contest.
