CQWW 2024

For CQWW 2024 we were once again guests of Upper Chancton Farm and we are very grateful to Stephen for allowing us to use the field and barn.

We set up the antennas and equipment on Saturday morning in torrential rain so as to be ready to start operating around midday. We then operated right through 'til midday Sunday with many members getting the chance to put in a shift operating and/or logging.

We set up a tent as an operating position inside the barn. The barn provided protection from the elements and the tent provided a warmer operating space.

From the outset band conditions were incredible with all bands wide open and packed with contest stations. We spent most of the day and much of the evening on 10m as there was no shortage of stations to work. Throughout the afternoon there was a steady stream of South American and Caribbean stations.

At the end of our operating time we had amassed a total of 573 QSOs with 449 unique stations in 93 countries and 27 zones.

Rather than going all-out for the highest possible score we enjoyed some fairly relaxed operating, giving newer and less-experienced operators the chance to learn operating and logging. There was noticeable improvement as the day went on.

The top 10 countries for volume of QSOs included two outside Europe, demonstrating just how much DX was available.

As the sun went down, so 10m closed and we moved to 15m. There were plenty of stations to work until it too closed. 20m was good right up until midnight when the overnight team of Paul and Mark switched to the lower bands. It was then that the gremlin appeared, switching from the beam to the 80/40m dipoles resulted in low power and high SWR. 160m seemed similarly unhappy. After re-checking everything the co-ax switch was found to be the culprit, connecting the 80/40m dipoles to the one good position on the switch enabled full power to be achieved. Overnight 160m was hard going and the higher frequency bands were open, hence only 7 contacts were made on 160m.

DX was plentiful with contacts over 10000km on all bands except 160m. The best DX on each band is shown below.

Several members arrived back on site early on Sunday morning to take over from the overnight team and then dismantle the station. Fortunately the weather was much kinder and everything was taken down and packed away in the dry.

A map of all our contacts can be found at Google Maps

Many thanks to Bill for organising pretty much everything, the setting-up and tearing-down teams and all the operators and loggers. Here's looking forward to next year!