This session I had company in the shape of Paul G1YFC to help set up and operate. Another pair of ears is always welcome with the weak stations or when we are suffering from QRM from other stations. On reaching the bottom of the ascent of the hill we were greeted by flashing flooding from the lashing storm that was hammering the car. The lower roads where more level had 4 to 6 inches of flowing water over them and even the higher steeper sections were a brown rushing river about 1 or 2 inches deep. This is a picture of the very last section of hill with hardly any catchment area above it:
Once on site we sat in the car to wait out the heavy rain. It eased a little so we started to put the mast up but the rain picked up and it felt like someone was pouring a hosepipe down the back of my non waterproof trousers so we abandoned ship to the car. It eased again so back out we went and this time it stopped and the sun came out. By the time we had the antenna up we were bone dry from soaked through.
We had a few QSOs before the start and fisnished the last rag chew with the first QSO in the contest but found it a slow start. Conditions seemed quite odd and we could hear a lightning strike crash every now and then for most of the contest but we didn’t see any. Paul had time to take an arty low sun shot of me in action:
We also had an interested visitor:
Anyway, we got 105 QSOs but didn’t work one single European station not even Frank PE1EWR who always calls us. Although our QSOs were respectable and points per QSO also not bad, we just didn’t have the multipliers.
Our QSO map:
Claimed scores:
And the results:
Full result list (PDF)