As every year, the Nicosia Contest Group took part in the 2017 CQWW WPX SSB Contest. However, as 5B4AFM had to be away, the team this year comprised of Spyros 5B4MF, Tamer 5B4AHE, Philip 5B4ZN, George 5B4KH, Nestor 5B4AHZ, Andreas 5B8AP, and our guest Demetris 5B4ALS.
It must be noted that this was 5B4ALS’s first official participation in a major contest, and the rest of the team was more than impressed with his traffic handling skills. Continue reading
Way to go C4A team!
The 2015 CQ WPX SSB contest participation has just been completed. Unofficial results indicate that the team broke it’s own record, achieving 39,348,483 points, up from 35,386,976 achieved in 2014. QSO’s counted to 7508, up from 6890 achieved in 2014. The team is even more happier given that the C4A station is still a long way from 100% operational, following the setbacks of 2014, after the 2nd tower head bowed to high winds.
Based on a CQ Magazine article, seems like the NCG team achieved #5 World position during the 2014 CQ WPX SSB Contest.
Well done everyone !!
Seems like the gremlins decided to pay us a visit. Following a pretty decent operating during the 1st and 2nd stint, the gremlins decided to pay us a visit during the 3rd stint. For some reason the generator would not start. Spent more than an hour to get it going without success. So unfortunately we had to call it a day for this contest.
Oh well. This is another lesson for us ahead of the next contests. Hopefully we’ll get it right next time.
Coax Cable comparison http://feedly.com/e/9Tjr0qrS
The contest activity begun right on time and everything seemed to be working just fine. 10 minutes into the contest and the generator decided to die on us. Took us another 10 minutes to switch to a backup generator.
From then on things looked much better. The stations begun piling in and conditions looked pretty good. The first hour proved to be great with about 60 QSO’s. However, the rates dropped during the second hour to about 30 QSO’s.
Two and a half hours into the contest, the backup generator decided to play a couple of tricks as well. We were forced to shut down for about 30 minutes while we figured out what was wrong. After playing about with some of it’s settings, and moving out of the shed in an effort to cool it down, we managed to get it going again.
It’s now well into the third hour of the contest and 5B4ZN just commented “I’ve got a pile up! Had 2 QSO’s in 40 minutes!!” 🙂
Setting up the 160m dual phased vertical antenna for it’s inaugural contest.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicosiacontestgroup/sets/72157641331435993/
Here are the preliminary results of our inaugural contest.
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB
Call: C4A
Operator(s): 5B8AP 5B4AHE 5B4AHZ 5B4KH 5B4MF 5B4ZN 5B4AFM
Station: C4A
Class: M/2 HP
QTH: Nicosia
Operating Time (hrs): 46
Nicosia Contest Group 