The Crawley Amateur Radio Club held their annual WSPR contest throughout the month of April. There were three categories; Transmitting (other stations hearing you), Receiving (you hearing other stations), and QSOs (both stations hearing each other). The 20m band was used and the only rule was that the maximum power was 5W.
The transmitting contest really went down to the wire with the final results for the top three being very close.
Thanks to Stewart (G3YSX) for running the contest and regularly updating members with updated statistics. The club hopes that everyone enjoyed it, either as a participant or as a spectator.
We asked the top three positioned members what kit they used, and if they had any useful tips.
Stewart (G3YSX) – TX 1st Place, RX 2nd Place, QSO 2nd Place
I started using a QRP Labs QDX, but when that failed I moved to my ICOM 705 running 2W. The antenna was the 2el SteppIR. When the winds were light the antenna was pointed at 40’, but when the winds were high (a lot of the month) at 25’. When the winds are low the heading is fixed as NS.
David (M0WID) – TX 2nd Place, RX 1st Place, QSO 1st Place
Radio was my Hermes-Lite2 SDR running 5w (out of the radio, much less at the antenna feed) for some of the time, 0.2W for most of the time. SparkSDR was the software used, running mostly on an ancient Fujitsu thin client under Lubuntu. SparkSDR does not require WSJT-X to be running as it runs the decoder directly. Antenna was a homebrew off-centre dipole which is roughly half-wave on 80m, up at around 10m. It is very off-centre as the feed point is at around 17% of the length. The 4:1 transformer and choke also homebrew. Feed is around 50m of lossy RG58. An old KW107 antenna tuning system located in the shack provided the perfect match.
Peter (M0LMG) – TX 3rd Place, RX 3rd Place, QSO 3rd Place
My radio was an ICOM 705 running at 5W. Due to me not having setup waterproofing and temporarily running my feeder through my shack window, I could only operate when it was dry, and I didn’t operate at night (apart from the last three days). My antenna was a UK Antennas Multi-band end-fed antenna. Close to the antenna feed point I used a 1:1 Common Mode Choke (also from UK Antennas). 10m of RG58 was used to get into the shack. The software used was WSJT-X. I would recommend to not use the default 1500Khz position, and watch the ALC level on the rig.
We should also mention new member Geoff (M7GID). Geoff put a call out to club members for assistance in setting up his Yaesu FTDX-10, and also hadn’t used any digital modes before. Richard (G3ZIY) and Peter (M0LMG) enjoyed Geoff’s hospitality and set everything up for him. Geoff entered the competition a week after everyone else, but still performed very well indeed (TX 4th Place, RX 5th Place, QSO 5th Place).
Full results were as follows:
TX Category
Posn Call Stns SQ Score
1 G3YSX 1350 544 734400
2 M0WID 1358 521 707518
3 M0LMG 1349 523 705527
4 M7GIM 1113 504 560952
5 G4PEO 1094 491 537154
6 G4ANN 839 386 323854
7 2E0XDZ 745 359 267455
8 M0JGH 687 330 226710
9 G3ZIY 652 326 212552
10 M0HQM 634 300 190200
11 GX3WSC 597 293 174921
12 M1YAP 561 302 169422
13 M0EPX 571 279 159309
14 M6JGW 212 119 25228
15 M0IJP 205 110 22550
16 M5SB 142 80 11360
17 G0UPL 1 1 1
Rx Category
Posn Call Stns SQ Score
1 M0WID 1555 1102 1713610
2 G3YSX 1416 1028 1455648
3 M0LMG 1017 714 726138
4 G4ANN 927 649 601623
5 M7GIM 643 432 277776
6 G4PEO 585 386 225810
7 M1YAP 483 333 160839
8 G3ZIY 432 330 142560
9 GX3WSC 324 226 73224
10 M0EPX 255 175 44625
11 M0HQM 145 95 13775
12 M5SB 96 73 7008
13 2E0XDZ 40 36 1440
QSO Category
Posn Call Hrd by Hrd QSO
1 M0WID 1358 1555 504
2 G3YSX 1350 1416 486
3 M0LMG 1349 1017 392
4 G4ANN 839 927 273
5 M7GIM 1113 643 266
6 G4PEO 1094 585 228
7 G3ZIY 652 432 131
8 M1YAP 561 483 130
9 GX3WSC 597 324 95
10 M0EPX 571 255 80
11 M0HQM 634 145 63
12 M5SB 142 96 18
13 2E0XDZ 745 40 8
