VHF NFD 2003
Overall entries for VHF Field Day this year are just a couple down on the 2002 levels but activity levels were actually quite comparable with a couple of groups having problems with getting their final entries together. However, there has been an interesting change, with several of the major groups bowing out and being replaced by smaller clubs and groups lower down the table. This increase in real club based activity was something that the VHF Contest Committee tried to encourage by lowering the equipment and manpower hurdles in the Restricted and Low Power sections two years ago. It's the Restricted section with its straightforward requirements for just 100W and a single antenna which is growing and it's good to see evidence of more clubs entering. You should see the VHFCC more active in promoting the joys of VHF NFD and other club-based contests in particular over the next year or so, and if your club is interested in receiving a talk on contesting, please contact me.
These changes in the mix of entrants has led to some interesting movements, particularly at the top of the Open section, with groups who have been competing for many years getting a much greater taste of success! It also means that, in order to be competitive - even in the 'Big Boys Section'- you don't need to have so much hardware, and there were very few instances of big multiple antenna systems in use this year. In the Low Power section, it only took a team of 2 people to win.
Several groups talked about great examples of club spirit rather than outright competitiveness in NFD. Basingstoke ARC said "The logs steadily began to fill and many people had a go at operating and logging. There were some very good operators and some not very good operators. Some people were adept with the computers and some were a bit slow. If BARC was a contest group then only the experts would have been operating and logging. However, BARC is a radio club and, as such, its priorities are to involve as many members as possible and have an enjoyable time. The bonus would be to achieve this and do well in the contest.".
The North Gentleman's Contest Group lived up to their name this year and entertained a visit from members of one of the larger groups. The visitors were suitably impressed with the fellowship, relaxed environment and sense fun compared to the strict regime of their own group!
Leicester RS used the event as a training session for new and "rusty" ops and energy from their 12 year old operator M3GME kept them all going! The Chippenham DARC staged a return to VHF contests after many years away and felt that for this year the main aim had to be 'just taking part'. Hopefully next year we'll see them back and moving up the table.
The ultimate example of how it is possible to compete with a small team is that David Dodds, GM4WLL and Jim Martin, MM0BQI entered as two teams this year - one in the Restricted section and one in the Low Power section and took the trophies awarded to the leading Scottish entries in each of these sections. Congratulations - it took quite some commitment to do that, and it's taken a few years of trying! Next year we may make some small changes to the rules to make sure that awards are shared around.
Several groups were inspected this year, including many at the top of the tables and all was found to be in perfect order. However - everyone didn't have straightforward contests. The Colchester group never got on 6m due to antenna problems, making a big dent in their potential score. Crawley and Reigate wrestled with the vagaries of bad connections to H100 coax on 70cm, and also on 70cm, the Open Section winners, Windmill CG lost 3 hours due to a pre-amp failure. MIDCARS struggled with some problems on 23cm and finally had to drop the mast and test antennas at 1am. They described this as 'interesting'!
However, 4m was clearly the problem band. The Aberdeen VHF Group only made it on for the last 90 minutes having had a failure of their transverter and had to drive to Aberdeen and back to gather up a replacement. Nevertheless they still managed to come 4th on the band. Last year's Restricted Section winners, Bristol Contest Group had a much harder time this year and found conditions pretty poor. They also discovered a few days before the contest that they had lost part of their 4m antenna and Salop ARS lost their 4m antenna as the mast failed on tear down
Getting power to a field-day site is always a challenge. Generators are the most popular option - especially with the larger groups, but they can be notoriously unreliable - especially if they only come out once a year - and 2003 seemed to be the year of the generator failure! Crawley & Reigate lost an hour as their generator dipped to 168V, but Lothians RS's went the other way, soaring to 280V and causing a flashover in the 6m amplifier. The damage from this big bang was inventively solved on site by sawing out a part of screen bypass capacitor on one of the 4CX250B bases! The Rochdale and Salop teams also had their generators fail. Maybe this is a lesson on what needs an overhaul over the winter!
Last year CARSCOG Gearboxers staged a full station using solar and wind power and they repeated that feat this year. Thankfully they had 3 times the solar generating capacity available this year because the sun shone, but the winds were so light that the wind generator only turned for 5 minutes. Also in the alternative energy camp were GM3TAL and G3SHK operating from Scotland. They used wind power to charge their pair of 90Ah batteries which they had to hand carry up the hill - lots of exercise there!
On 6m, good sporadic E conditions made the band popular and interesting. As one group said - 'We worked a ZA and it wasn't even our best DX". On 4m, the sporadic E gave rise to a mixture of headaches from broadcast FM QRM and cheers for providing many people's best DX into Slovenia. S51DI provided those QSOs and is an RSGB member - thanks Ivan!
What always makes Field Day exciting is when that Sporadic E reaches the heady heights of 2m - and it did just that this year with superb DX and signals down to the far South East of Europe on Sunday morning. It wasn't just the Sporadic E which made 2m exciting though, since there was also decent tropo down to the South of France and Spain. 70cm also benefited from the good tropo with an outstanding 1400km QSO between the Lothians RS and F5KSE/P in JN02 the Pyrenees. Some of these signals were very strong and the South Birmingham Club had a Spanish station call them off the back of the antenna on 70cm.
The Open section was won the Windmill Contest Group, giving them their first award of the Surrey Trophy pushing the Reigate & Crawley clubs into second place. The Lothians Radio Society took 3rd place overall which is good for a team that far North, and once again take the Tartan Trophy as the leading resident Scottish group.
The Restricted Section was where the action was this year. Last year's winners, The Bristol Contest Group were pushed down into third place by a comprehensive win from first time section entrants De Montfort University ARS and a very creditable 2nd place from Lagan Valley in Northern Ireland. The two man team of GM4WLL and MM0BQI were the leading Scottish group and win the Cockenzie Quaich.
The Low Power section was dominated by the same pair of two man teams as last year with the Warrington Contest Group winning the section and taking the Arthur Watts Trophy, and MM0BQI and GM4WLL in their second guise taking second place and the Scottish Trophy
Once again the Mix and Match section was the most closely fought, with the Telford & DARS again grabbing the G5BY Trophy for winning the section, with the SRCC Contest team in the runner-up position. The Telford team started the contest with a bang (or a whoosh at least) by launching a solid fuel rocket on the gong of 1400. Perhaps this was the inspiration for them to soar to the top of section again!
Thanks to G3MEH, YO3DMU, M1GXL, IW0BET, G4DEZ, YO3FFF, HB9DDZ, G8ZK, GW0ARA, S51DI for checklogs. G4FRE planned to send a checklog, having operated from a wedding, but the log got too smudged by having champagne spilt on it - now that sounds like a civilized way to operate NFD!
Open Section Pos Group Name Locator 50 70 144 432 1296 Total 1 Windmill CG 01LD 1000 0 903 794 967 3664 2 Reigate ATS & Crawley ARC 01OC 707 0 897 369 1000 2973 3 Lothians RS 74WV 672 1000 589 303 0 2563 4 Colchester RA 01PU 0 384 1000 1000 0 2384 5 Aberdeen VHF Group 86RW 907 412 651 248 0 2218 6 Bracknell ARC & Flight Refuelling ARS 80ST 825 533 506 316 0 2180 7 Stevenage & DARS 91TW 713 359 156 0 429 1658 8 Cockenzie & Port Seton ARC 85RU 469 688 317 49 0 1524 9 Harlow & DARS 01BR 832 379 304 0 0 1515 10 MIDCARS 83QE 518 321 289 0 227 1355 11 Wythall ARC 92BJ 543 149 363 169 0 1224 12 Guildford & DARS 91TF 619 318 73 0 0 1009 13 Cambridge & DARC 02CE 0 150 290 64 220 724 14 Newquay & DARS 70KI 211 178 91 0 0 479 15 Edgeware & DRS 91VO 307 0 121 0 0 429 Restricted Section Pos Group Name Locator 50 70 144 432 1296 Total 1 De Montfort University ARS 02ST 1000 0 1000 1000 1000 4000 2 Lagan Valley ARS 74AI 599 1000 724 414 0 2738 3 Bristol CG 81KW 927 626 552 614 0 2719 4 South Birmingham RS 82XJ 836 606 0 543 651 2636 5 Newbury & DARS 91GI 642 0 543 310 542 2037 6 Salop ARS 82LN 739 572 486 206 0 2003 7 Basingstoke ARC 91KG 414 0 495 418 491 1819 8 Three Clubs CG 01BI 862 363 344 234 0 1803 9 GM4WLL & MM0BQI 85NR 418 702 413 235 0 1767 10 Rochdale & DARS 83VP 837 581 199 34 0 1651 11 Dave Brooking 81PH 703 611 0 0 0 1314 12 CARSCOG Gearboxers 'A' 92HE 493 379 198 191 0 1261 13 Andover ARC 91FH 633 381 180 0 0 1194 14 Leicester RS 92JO 366 400 281 0 0 1047 15 Highland CG 75DH 604 0 329 80 0 1014 16 GM3TAL & G3SHK 75IU 0 811 70 57 0 938 17 Chippenham & DARC 91AJ 180 0 380 3 0 563 18 West Bromwich Central RC 'A' 93XF 79 229 172 17 0 496 19 Moray Firth ARS 87JJ 0 0 153 16 0 1681 Low Power Section Pos Group Name Locator 50 70 144 432 1296 Total 1 Warrington CG 93AD 0 0 1000 1000 1000 3000 2 MM0BQI & GM4WLL 85NR 1000 1000 0 335 0 2335 3 Two Counties 'A' 92LJ 489 0 420 431 0 1341 4 Mid Sussex ARS 90WV 405 0 367 237 0 1009 5 Goole R&ES 93PV 0 478 311 201 0 989 6 Torbay ARS 'B' 80DQ 920 0 0 0 0 920 7 Two Counties 'B' 92LJ 0 342 0 0 521 863 8 Sutton Coldfield RS 92FM 458 0 250 0 0 708 9 Herstmonceux Megacycles 00DX 0 0 439 0 0 439 10 Clive O'Hennessy 78WA 0 253 0 8 0 261 11 South Bristol ARC 81QJ 0 0 195 0 0 195 12 CARSCOG Gearboxers 'B' 92HE 0 0 0 0 90 90 Mix & Match Section Pos Group Name Locator 50 70 144 432 1296 Total 1 Telford & DARS 82NN 601 712 685 0 479 2478 2 SRCC Contest Group 91XH 579 0 605 464 392 2040 3 Shefford & DARS 92XA 480 497 586 364 0 1927 4 North Beds Gentleman's CG 92TI 0 462 334 419 711 1926 5 Torbay ARS 'A' 80DQ 0 558 558 290 93 1498 6 Clifton ARS 01DH 373 463 224 0 169 1228 7 Thornton Cleveleys ARS 83NU 563 38 103 0 0 704 8 Farnborough & DARS 91OG 0 0 62 27 0 881