If you would like to record a breif message before you leave the site then this is the place, You have two minutes in which to do it and we look forward to hearing from you.
Contesting - VHF NFD 2006
Adjudicated Results
The final scores for last year's VHF NFD have now at long last been posted on the RSGB VHF Contest Committee website. Many of the claimed scores by different teams had already been posted on the “claimed score” page of the web site so there were no great surprises in the final results table.
The combined CARC and the Reigate Club team again achieved a very creditable 4 th place in the Open Section of the Contest. We had been hoping to move up a place or two in 2006 from the new site in Suffolk but the first three places were again dominated by specialist contest groups, with overall first place being taken yet again by the very successful Colchester RA Group.
The Windmill CG team were this year pushed into third place behind the Aberdeen CG who moved up from 9 th place in 2005 to second place in 2006 with very high scores on both 50MHz and 70MHz.
As ever, the 144MHz band was hotly contested with some close scores, but the CARC/RATS team will be disappointed after achieving first place on this band in 2005 in being pushed down into third place in 2006 behind the Windmill CG with less than 40 points in 900 between them.
The CARC/RATS team however got their revenge on 1296MHz by making our highest ever score on that band and coming a very close second behind the Colchester CG and scoring 876 points out of a possible 1000, almost double that of the Windmill CG, pushing them into a fairly distant third place with 482 points. They were located at Ashford, fairly close to our old contest site at Folkestone.
On 432MHz CARC/RATS team slipped to fourth place after experiencing technical problems at the start although they were credited with the longest DX contact on this band of 1375km.
On the 50Mhz band, the appearance of geographically scattered sporadic E-layer DX produced some very long distance contacts notably one of 7131km to K4RX by the G3FBB Windmill CG which helped to bring them into first place on this band but it did help make a bit of a lottery according to location and as a result CARC/RATS came a somewhat disappointing sixth place despite some very impressive antenna hardware in the sky.
It is significant I think, that the very strong Colchester Contest Group who were located quite close to us in East Anglia, despite their overall first place in the open section, only managed 488 points as against CARC/RATS score of 566 in the normalised score table coming seventh on that band which suggests that they like us missed out on some of the E-layer DX.
Now this year . . . . . . . . !!
CARC VHF NFD 2006
The left hand picture shows the 2m setup with a box of 4 x 10 long boom yagis on one mast and a pair of separately steerable stacked 9 eles on the second 100ft mast with the 2m tent in between. On the left of the right hand picture can be seen, against the background of trees, the satellite antenna perched on a hay bale to distibute DX Cluster info to each station by WiFi. To the right of that can be seen the 2 masts of the 6m station on the either side of the green tent with a pair of stacked 7 ele yagis on one mast and a 5 ele on the other. Behind that can be seen the 23cm caravan with its single 100ft mast carrying a crosswise gantry with seperate rotatable antennas at each end with separate power amps at the masthead.one 200W and one 80W The antennas are a vertical stack of 4 x 22ele yagis for the main antenna plus a secondary 33 ele long boom yagi. Finally in the distance can be seen the blue 70cm tent with its two towers, one carrying a stack of 4x28 ele and the other a pair of 21 ele . . . . . err,
do you think that we were trying too hard ?
listen to this audio clip of a CARC/RATS 23cm DX CW QSO exchange as received in Germany by DM7A in locator JO60LK at a distance of 822km and located very close to the Czech border. The incoming report from the G5LK/P operator to DM7A can clearly be heard giving him his report of 559 in JO02RF and the G5LK/P operator's name Gerry.
We have been fortunate that in the last two years we have been joined by members of the Whitton and District ARS www.warg.info/ . Their contribution on site has been most welcome.
