After the contest ... the debrief.

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm concluding my breakdown of the contest that I participated in recently as a mobile station. I planned to make my contacts on one band and I did that. Feedback indicated that there were other contacts to be had on other bands, but switching bands is a non trivial affair with my current set-up. I planned to have a common frequency that would be a local cluster of activity, except it never happened that way because others decided to do their own thing. This meant that my antenna was tuned for the top end of the band, rather than the more typical centre of activity. I expected to work several home stations and managed to do so with two, but that was much lower than I expected and planned for, so my overall score didn't reach the planned levels, even if it was triple last year's effort. I planned to drive a circuit in about 90 minutes, instead it took about three hours. Fortunately there were lots of mobile stations about which helped me much more than expected. I keep telling myself that I need to sort out a voice-keyer because each time my voice gives out about half way through the contest, but again I keep forgetting to make that happen. My laptop power worked pretty well, but the location of the device, sitting on the passenger seat and then during on air activity, parked at the side of the road, it was balanced on my knee. Not ideal and not comfortable. My phone worked really well as my live GPS map and the boundaries I'd drawn using Google My Maps really helped to show me where I was in relation to the boundaries for this contest. I'm a relatively new arrival into the Amateur community but I often forget that I've been contesting almost from day one. My first on air experience was a club station during a field day camp out where the activity centred around a little folding table with Amateurs crowded around it. On air I have lots of broadcast experience, which means that I'm experienced in multi-tasking, coordinating frequencies, logs, callsigns, navigation and strategic objectives. I forget that this is not true for others on air. I love contesting, seriously, I love it. This activity puts me right on the bleeding edge of my capability and it's exhilarating to explore the peaks and troughs of the activity. I used rope to prevent my heavy antenna from breaking my boot lip mount and was worried about strange looks I might get. The rope worked well, the mount did not suffer from the experience and I didn't get much in the way of strange looks. In fact, much less than when I'm parked up with my 12m squid pole. Food and water worked great, but I will add public toilets to my map for next year, since it's not fun having to hunt. Mind you, a petrol station is a good option when you're in a hurry. At the end of the day, I managed to triple my score, I achieved all my objectives and proved to myself that my strategy, which came about thanks to discussion with fellow contesters, was solid, workable and a better performer than last year. I'm not yet sure how I'll change what I did, perhaps more antennas, parked at places longer, working more bands at the time might be an improvement. Time will tell. I hope that this adventure made you look at your activities and gives you some ideas on what to try, what to investigate and things to look out for. Hopefully I'll hear you on air during the next contest. I'm Onno VK6FLAB