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| It's always nice to get spotted by KL7RA at around dawn! | Yaesu FT710 was being used for first time in a major CW contest. |
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| 40m quarter-wave vertical in a muddy field. | 50 radials were laid around the 40m antenna. | Alpha 91ß with Palstar ATU perched on top. |
Ian G3WVG writes : This was a last minute idea to visit a South Wales holiday rental cottage to take part in CQWW CW. It would be a chance to try out my new Yaesu FT710. It’s an all SDR radio, it had good reviews and I was interested to see how it would perform in the busiest and best of all CW contests. The short answer was: it performed very well indeed!
It would be a low key entry and it seemed the easiest solution was to try a single band 40m entry. There had been a lot of rain in Wales and the fields were waterlogged. I’m not sure that helped the radial field for the single quarter wave vertical, or not. In the end I stopped at 50 radials.
The station was set up on the kitchen table. My trusty Alpha 91ß worked faultlessly … although it was aided by my Palstar ATU in order the bring the SWR down. I suppose I could have made more effort to improve the gamma match at the Spiderbeam antenna base. But kneeling in the mud at the antenna feed point in the pouring rain didn’t really appeal to me.
In the end it was more of a fun entry than a serious one. I guess I couldn’t expect a simple little 10m long vertical to compete with big boys with their 3 ele beams. But it was a weekend of great CQWW-CW fun and well worth the effort.
73 - Ian G3WVG MW5B
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| Continental Breakdown : Europe 66.8%, North America 26.4%, Asia 3.5%, South America 1.5%, Oceania 0.9% and Africa 0.7%. |
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| MW5B on 40m throughout most of the 48 hours with just four GMT hourly periods where no QSOs were made : QRV for about 39 hours |
| DXCC | QSOs | DXCC | QSOs | |
| W | 505 | HB | 25 | |
| DL | 262 | 9A | 24 | |
| UA | 119 | LA | 22 | |
| I | 99 | YU | 22 | |
| SP | 83 | UA9 | 19 | |
| OK | 71 | EU | 18 | |
| UR | 67 | ON | 16 | |
| EA | 61 | PY | 16 | |
| F | 59 | OZ | 15 | |
| G | 55 | SV | 14 | |
| PA | 55 | GM | 13 | |
| SM | 45 | E7 | 12 | |
| HA | 43 | JA | 11 | |
| VE | 38 | OE | 10 | |
| YO | 36 | BY | 8 | |
| S5 | 32 | IT9 | 7 | |
| LY | 30 | 4X | 6 | |
| OM | 28 | ES | 6 | |
| LZ | 26 | VK | 6 | |
| OH | 26 | YL | 6 |
The table shows the Top-40 DXCC countries worked with countries outside Europe being highlighted. In total 543 W/VE stations were worked.
This South Wales rural location on the Gower has been used for several previous contest operations by Ian G3WVG (MW5B) in both CQWW-CW and CQWW-160.