M0XII/P - UKAC 50Mhz Contest - May

The May UKAC 50Mhz Contest from locator square IO91MP was expected to be an exciting one with regards to propagation this time of year on the 50Mhz band, naturally the Sproadic E propagation largely disappeared as the contest started. Unfortunately I was late starting this contest as I got caught up in London's rush hour traffic which made it a complete nightmare to get to the site for 19:00UTC. Finally I got setup and started the contest at 19:25UTC unfortunately I missed the first run of QSO's between 19:00 & 19:25UTC which is usually very intense period of the contest as everyone is piling up on top of each other to give away points whilst trying to find free run QRG's to start their contest. This month the weather conditions were dreadful at the site with temperatures down to 8-9 degrees Celsius and with very heavy rain including fog for the start of the contest meant putting together the station dissatisfying and extremely difficult which lead to moments where I stood back and asked myself "Why am I doing this again!?!" :-)  

As for activity and band conditions in this month's contest I did find it difficult to break through the wall of stations within the IO83 / IO93 squares with only one contact within IO94 square, this was somewhat disappointing as hearing the regulars in GI/GD/GM for multipiers was unfortunately not happening for me so again I started to question my antenna and setup etc. Once the fog had cleared I observed many of the trees at the site which have now become fine and leafy towards the North and West which made me question were my signals actually being reflected or was it just down to tough conditions. I would like to say a big thank you to all stations who persisted with great patience on geting into my log as band conditions seemed to fade out and become quiet around 20:40UTC. At this point I reverted to CW during this period and was delighted that some other stations did the same, I managed 4 QSO's on CW and if the other stations were like me "delighted to have worked them" it certainly made the final stages of the contest a lot more pleasant. 

This month I finished the contest with a claimed score of 82 QSO's and 11 Multiplier squares and a total of 103,499 points with only 3 DXCC entities worked, certainly down on previous months results but it was great to catch Paul ON6NA on the band in JO11VF Square as my furthest DX of 332Km, I thought there may have been a run of EU stations at that time but conditions died out very fast. Once again Thanks to all stations for the points and multipliers this month it was very much appreciated.


My working conditions again was the same as last month an FT847 Transceiver with 100 watts into a 5 Element Yagi up only about 15 foot from ground.

Here's a map of the QSO's made during the contest:

Looking forward to working you all again in the next UKAC contest.

73's
Pat
EI5IX - M0XII