GZ7V 2010 CQ WW CW Contest DXpedition to the Shetland Islands (EU-012)
10 years have passed since the GZ7V callsign was first used - a total of 18000 GZ7V QSOs were made in 2000, 2001 and 2003.
This is the story of GZ7V 2010 ..... click on any of the pictures below for a full-size version ...
The weather in the week before the contest was ideal for testing antennas - cold, but dry with weak sunshine - I'm a great believer in testing every antenna carefully before any DXpedition.
This picture shows the testing the of the borrowed GMDX-group C3S before the contest - I decided to only have this yagi at 30' above ground level - not ideal but a manageable height if you are (a) installing the antenna single-handed and (b) anticipating 60mph+ winds in Shetland.
Adding extra PVC-tube spacers to the C3S driven element cell - again anticipating high winds causing the elements to move around a lot.
The Force-12 C3S is an excellent DXpedition yagi (if you cannot get to a beach to use verticals) - 2 full-sized elements on each of the 3 bands 20-15-10 - a 12' boom and only 10kg.
Leaving Aberdeen harbour on Wednesday evening, the weather was deteriorating rapidly. The Northlink Ferries 'MV Hjaltland' is a far superior ship to the ferry that took us to Shetland in 2000 and 2001 - much larger and more stable. However the force 6 to 7 headwinds and mountainous seas overnight made it move about a lot. Luckily I didn't feel seasick (after my ZL1CT/MM experiences in 2003 and 2005 I don't worry so much about a ship moving about)
The ferry leaves Aberdeen at 7pm in the evening and arrives at Lerwick at 7.30am (approx) the following morning. A major factor is the state of the tides at the entrance to Aberdeen harbour, which is relatively shallow.
Arriving at Lerwick on Thursday morning ...
The C3S yagi installed on the East side of the contest QTH at Braewick. Braewick is at the North of the mainland of Shetland, near to the Eshaness lighthouse.
The 80m vertical installed on the West side of the contest QTH - the ground is very wet here. The small loch froze over after this picture was taken.
This 80m vertical was home-made - a lightweight 15' x 2" aluminium pole with a 32' fibreglass pole on top - 2 x 12' top-loading wires and 2 elevated radials.
A view of the contest QTH looking East from near the 80m vertical. The 160m inverted-L is on the right - positioned on the South side of the house. It was made using the lower 35' or so of a Titanex V80e with a 100' top wire and 2 elevated radials.
The 40m vertical positioned about 50m North of the contest QTH - made from a 10m fibreglass pole with 2 elevated radials.
The stunningly beautiful scenery of Shetland in winter - a snow shower approaching from the South-east.
A swirling snow storm passing to the North on Friday afternoon.
The GZ7V 2010 station - the only available table was fairly small. Everything worked as expected - my 2-month old K3 handled the pile-ups quite well. There may be some issues with the K3 AGC, but I found setting AGC-SLP to 0 and AGC-THR to 8 worked well and signals were generally easy to pick out from a pile-up. However the pile-ups were so big at times that I could only get the last 2 letters of a callsign.
A surprise on Saturday morning - drifting snow. The snow showers were mostly brief, but accompanied by strong winds (about 40mph) - luckily Shetland did not have the unusual thunder and lightning + snow which friends Keith GM4YXI (GM5X) and Jim GM0NAI (GM7R) reported further South.
I did lose about 3.5 hours of operating time on Saturday with S9+ snow static on all bands and antennas - especially frustrating on 80m when running a big pile-up and suddenly unable to hear any stations. I had no Beverage or other receive antennas which *might* have helped reception.
The snowy scene on Monday morning, when I started dismantling all the antennas.
It's not much fun rolling up coax which is buried in 10cm of icy snow !
The contest QTH seen from the South-West
Another picture of the dramatic Shetland winter scenery
Local amateur Hans GM4SSA (also GZ5Y and MS0ZET) without whose help setting up and dismantling antennas (and 6 multipliers!) I would have really struggled.
Thanks for your help, Hans !
12 noon on Monday - Chris GM3WOJ - all packed up and ready to travel home !
Heading slowly through the snow - 35 miles back to Lerwick for the evening sailing.
Driving conditions were poor on the narrower roads of Shetland, but the snowplough drivers did a great job of keeping them clear every day.
Tuesday morning - dangerous driving conditions on the road from Aberdeen to my home QTH - this 140 mile journey usually takes about 3 and a half hours, but took over 5 hours because of the snow.
The car thermometer read minus 7oC for most of the journey.
Another surprise when I reached home - snow drifts preventing me getting into the driveway - I had to dig for an hour! My XYL Pippa is in South Africa visiting her family - she sent me a text saying 'it is 30oC here and I like snow' ...grrrr...
These pictures below show how much snow fell at my home QTH during the CQ WW CW weekend.
That's enough pictures - let's talk RADIO !
I started to consider the possibility of a contest DXpedition to Shetland about 4 months ago. I contacted Hans GM4SSA, Hans MM0XAU and Ian G3WVG by e-mail - all those who would or might be QRV from Shetland - I didn't want to offend anyone by just arriving and starting to operate. Ian G3WVG kindly indicated that he would take a break from Shetland this year. Hans MM0XAU was hoping to be QRV on 160, 15 and 10m but was unable to travel to Shetland for the contest. Hans GM4SSA is not a CW contester, but I think he has been bitten by the CW contesting bug and will be showing up as GZ5Y in future events once he has had more practice.
A single-op DXpedition always places limitations on what you can or cannot take with you. At an early stage I decided to take a simple (SO1R most of the time) station and simple antennas. (Those of you that know me know that I hate aerial tuning units - if I found one in my shack I would destroy it) Gavin GM0GAV kindly lent me his Titanex V80e, as used on the successful VP8SDX DXpedition, which should have been an ideal 160/80/40m antenna all in one. However the VP8SDX experiences and my own testing made me decide that the tuning unit which is supplied with the Titanex V80e is ..er.. useless on 160m. The 34uH coil heats up and RF arcing is almost impossible to avoid when trying to use a 65' radiator as a base-loaded vertical on 1.8MHz. So the Titanex ATU was flung aside as was the top 30' or so of the Titanex and the lower 35' approx was used as the vertical part of an Inverted-L. With about 100' of wire at the top and 2 elevated radials (about 6' above ground level) the length of the radials was easily adjusted to show minimum SWR at 1830kHz. Obviously a greater vertical height and a ground-mat would have improved radiation efficiency, but this antenna worked well.
Someone told me "you can't top-load a vertical with a fibreglass pole at the top" - this immediately made me want to prove them wrong. The 80m vertical was top-loaded with 2 wires each about 12' long. From the very top of the fibreglass pole these wires sloped down for about 6' and then were taped onto 3mm twine guys which stabilised the fibreglass pole. Two other thin guys at right angles were used. This antenna worked well and survived the approx 50mph winds over the contest weekend - however an extra set of thin twine guys further down the fibreglass pole would have been a better arrangement.
The Force-12 C3S yagi uses riveted elements - not so convenient for a field-day style operation, so I riveted each half element at home, then used self-tapping screws at the contest site to complete the antenna (wrapped with PVC tape to stop the screws working loose). Again this antenna worked well - only about 10dB front-to-back but that is quite useful from NW Europe on e.g. 20m in the late afternoon, when you are beaming to USA but working the Far East off the back.
The contest started well, with loads of QSOs and mults on the low bands overnight. During the day on Saturday 40, 20 and 15 were good and I even managed to make QSOs on 10m which was pleasing - with the low SFI I did not have great expectations for 10m. The overall results worked out like this :
Band QSOs Zones Countries ------------------------------ 160: 419 13 58 80: 907 24 80 40: 678 23 73 20: 846 25 75 15: 696 21 78 10: 58 8 27 ------------------------------ Total: 3666 114 391 Total Score = 3,188,065 pts As a rare mult it is difficult to strike a balance between running and looking for mults.
I tried to resist the temptation to just 'run, run, run' and hope that mults would call me
- it doesn't work like this, you have to go looking for mults who are never tuning around, just running themselves.
I lost about 3.5 hrs due to snow static on Saturday - the bands were poor on Sunday morning (maybe some aurora overnight?) but picked up after about 9am.
Highlights - working ZL8X on 80m and being called by many exciting mults during the whole 48 hours. Low points - the GZ7V callsign is not good on CW - the good operators copied it first time, but quite a few stations gave up trying to copy me and lost a mult as a result. Dah dah dit, dah dah dit dit, dah dah dit dit dit should be in every pileup competition !
All GZ7V QSOs will be on LoTW soon.
GZ7V 2010 - a great contest and a great adventure - thanks everyone for the QSOs !
Thanks to the following for their support : Rob GM3YTS and GMDX group - loan of C3S antenna. Gavin GM0GAV - loan of Titanex V80e vertical. Jim GM0NAI - loan of coax cables and other bits and pieces. Alex GM4NFC - help with testing antennas. Hans GM4SSA - help with antennas.
73 Chris GM3WOJ / ZL1CT 30th November 2010