GZ7V Shetland 2001             

This is the story of our second visit to Shetland for the CQ WW SSB contest - October 27/28th 2001  

There were several changes for this trip, the most significant being that only 2 of us went - Chris GM3WOJ, and Keith GM4YXI.   Why do a Multi-Multi with only 2 operators ?   Well, after a lot of thought, we decided that we would never be competitive from as far North as Shetland, which spends a lot of time under the aurora, so we were best to be a Multi-Multi and give as many others as possible the opportunity to work the GZ multiplier.   Other reasons included the fact that the two operators who went are QSO 'addicts', and would keep working stations for as many of the 48 hours as possible, and that the whole trip becomes very expensive if you take a bigger team.  As a group we've been doing Multi-Multis since 1995, and gradually the number of operators involved has been reducing - for example for GM7V in CQ WW CW in November 2001, we are only having 6 operators for the whole weekend.  Personally I do not like Multi-Single events - far too much time spent standing about waiting to operate.   Give Multi-Multi a try with just a few operators - it's more efficient, more fun and more tiring !

We rented the same QTH as in 2000, an excellent location 39 miles from Lerwick, called Braewick.   It has good take-offs in most directions, has open spaces all around for antennas, and has no nearby houses (the nearest is about 200m away)     We sailed from Aberdeen on the evening of Tuesday 23rd October, and arrived in Lerwick on the Wednesday morning.  After some essential food shopping, we travelled to the rented QTH, and started setting up antennas immediately, taking advantage of a sunny and dry, but breezy, day.   All 3 HF yagis were supported on poles with rotators, erected using the 'gin-pole' system, which works very well and is safe if properly done.   The 3ele 20m yagi was first to be installed, at about 40' a.g.l., with a G-1000RC rotator mounted at the join of the 2 x 20' alloy scaffold poles.  This antenna and the 160m dipole which was on the same support took us much longer than expected to install, and we left it lowered touching the ground that evening, in case of high winds.  We spent the first evening assembling the stations and testing the computer network.   On the Thursday we erected the 40m vertical, the 15m yagi and the 10m yagi, on a windy day with some very heavy rain showers.  That night we saw some visual aurora - the shape of things to come !  On the Friday morning we erected the 80m vertical - we were finally ready for the contest !

On the Wednesday evening, much to Keith's dismay, we also erected a WARC 3-band vertical - this is the first commercially-made antenna I have purchased since 1996, and I was not impressed.   When it arrived, it had a fault !   Inside the plastic cover of the base, a short length of enamelled copper wire had been used to connect the centre pin of the SO-239 socket to the element - this wire had not been properly cleaned and tinned before soldering, and this was an open-circuit dry joint.   I fixed this back in September, and carefully tuned the radials + element lengths to give good SWR in the centre of each WARC band.   Guess what - after 7 QSOs on 18MHz, the pathetic trap melted !   (with only 400W of RF from the AL-80 amp.) - I was less than pleased - however, the SWR on 10MHz and 24.9MHz was still OK, so we made about 200 QSOs on 12m CW.    No more commercial antennas will be purchased by GM3WOJ for a while !   (I've rewound the trap by reversing and redrilling the melted plastic coil former, but have not had time to test it yet)           The story of GZ7V 2001 continues after these photographs :-

* * *  Click on any of these small pictures for an enlarged version  * * * 

	Chris GM3WOJ's car with the second full load of gear!  Note the trailer full of LDF4-50A Heliax feeder!
	Our rented Ford Transit van, full of gear and with the antennas loaded on the roof, ready to go.
	Aberdeen harbour at 1800 hours, just as we were leaving on the ferry to Lerwick. This harbour is a dramatic place - filled with light and sound. The two larger ships in this picture had just returned from helping to raise the Russian submarine 'Kursk'
	On the car-deck of the ferry 'St. Sunniva', on arrival in Lerwick, after a VERY rough 14-hour voyage!
	The GZ7V 2001 station set-up - 80/20/10 on the left, 160/40/15 on the right.
	A night-time view of the station set-up, looking through the kitchen area into the GZ7V 'shack'.
	Looking East from the QTH - the 15m yagi resting on the ground.
	Looking South from the QTH - Keith GM4YXI with the 20m yagi gin-pole and support in the background.  The distant rocks are a famous Shetland landmark called the 'Drongs of Hillswick', which feature on many Shetland calendars, etc..
	Looking North towards the QTH - 10m yagi on the left, 20m yagi in front of the house, and 15m yagi to the right.
	Looking South-East from near the QTH - the spectacular eroded cliffs and jagged rocks.
	An evening view of the QTH, looking North-East.   80m vertical on the left, 40m vertical in the distance, 10m yagi to the left of the QTH, 20m yagi to the right, and the 15m yagi beyond the QTH (second from the right)
	The base of the 80m vertical, with its elevated radials, near to the small loch which is 50m NW of the QTH.   This marshy area of flat ground is ideal for any vertical.
	Another evening view, looking South - the 20m yagi on the left, the 10m yagi on the right.

We were disappointed to be hit by the aurora on the Sunday, for the second year running.   The effects wore off slightly as the day went on, but our QSO rate had dropped a lot - only 15m seemed in good shape.  It's interesting that we could still hear a lot of strong signals on the bands, and they would usually come back fairly easily to a call, but it was very difficult to create the pile-ups we had created easily on the Saturday.    We worked just over 4000 stations on the Saturday, but less than 2000 on the Sunday - very frustrating.

Our final totals :-

Low points of the event :  Feeling sick on the boat going to Shetland, all bands auroral by 0800 on Sunday, deliberate QRM on 80m from G9Q (or someone masquerading as G9Q), being unable to crack the pile-up on ZD9IR for our 40th zone on 20m.

High points of the event :  Good pile-ups calling the GZ multiplier, all antennas surviving the high winds, being called by 5W0MO on 20m, etc..   

On the Sunday we did quite a lot of S&P, and the JA stations in particular seemed very excited to get a call from GZ7V.   World-wide, there still seems to be a lack of knowledge that GZ and MZ are a separate multiplier, despite our extensive advance publicity last year and this year.   It will take several years I think for the information to spread.    The weather over the weekend was dreadful - high winds and rain lashing against the windows.

One problem which preyed on our minds throughout the weekend was the time available to us on the Monday for dismantling antennas that had taken two and a half days to assemble.   With the clocks changing to GMT that weekend, we had daylight from about 0700, but had to be packed and ready to leave the QTH by 1600 at the latest - 1 hours drive to Lerwick then 'check-in' for the ferry by 1700.   At about 1900z on Sunday, we lowered and partially dismantled the 10m yagi, to save us time on the Monday. Immediately after the event finished, we dismantled and packed the equipment and computers back into their boxes.    Tony Erwood GM7AFE (now owner of the famous Lunna House, home of the WW2 'Shetland Bus'), Magnus Nicholson and his son Peter arrived to help us, and things went surprisingly smoothly and quickly - thanks guys !

One funny incident - Keith GM4YXI called D44TC on 160m and was told
'sorry I can't work you - I am the multiplier station'    They wouldn't
believe him when he reassured them that we would be a new mult., but they
called us later on HF, and on 80m twice, to make sure that we made a QSO with them on 160m later.    Some operator training needed I think....

We had a good Telnet DXCluster link to GB7CGL in Dorset (thanks Eric G0CGL), and that helped us work a lot of new mults., and pass them between bands.   One noticeable thing was the poor quality of many of the spots during CQ WW SSB - wrong callsigns, duplicate spots, old/late spots, wrong frequencies, etc. - must make Single-op Assisted a real nightmare of wasted time ?

GZ7V Equipment /Antennas
Station 1 (80/20/10)  FT-1000MP + Alpha 91B + Ameritron AL-80
80m vertical with elevated radials, 20m 3-ele yagi at 40', 10m 4-ele yagi at 22'
Station 2 (160/40/15)  IC-775DSP + Ameritron AL-1500x + Challenger 2
160m dipole, 40m vertical with elevated radials, 15m 4-ele yagi at 35'
3 x Pentium PCs running CT 9.65 linked by Ethernet, 1 x Pentium PC running WinTelnet 4.09.

So - that's the story of GZ7V 2001 - a contest expedition that had just about everything !    Many thanks to P&O Scottish Ferries for 'sponsoring' our travel in the form of reduced fares, and to everyone who helped us.   Thanks for the loan of alloy scaffold poles to Stewart GM4AFF/GM0F, and the loan of 2 rotators to Jim GM0NAI/GM7R.   Lastly, thanks to everyone who worked GZ7V !   Please QSL GZ7V via our manager Linda Taylor M0CMK

MZ5A - for CQ WW CW 2001 (November 24/25th 2001) the new prefix MZ will be activated for the first time ever by Nigel G3TXF and Ian G3WVG, signing  MZ5A from the same QTH as GZ7V.   Click here MZ5A for more information.

PLEASE WORK GM7V IN CQ WW CW 2001 - we'll be a Multi-Multi and we want to work YOU ! 

 73    Chris  GM3WOJ  and   Keith  GM4YXI