144 MHz Trophy Contest 2017

The weather was very mixed this year.  Saturday was warm and sunny with light winds. Sunday was wet for many with much stronger winds. The wettest weather occurred towards the end of the contest, just right for disassembling the station!  There was the usual crop of equipment failures and problems. This year, generators and amplifiers seemed to cause most of the problems.

Conditions were rated as average by most entrants. The number of entrants rose again, up from 85 in 2016 (82 in 2015) to 109 this year. Entries were received from G, GM, GW, GD, F, PA and UA (RA0LQ/MM in the English Channel).

Although conditions were not highly rated by entrants, there were 142 contacts over 800km of which 27 were over 900km and three exceeded 1000km.  Of the 27 QSOs over 900km, 20 were made from JO01, 3 from IO91, 2 from JO00, 1 from JO03 and 1 from IO84.  The 900+ km contacts were with DL (4), EA (9), OE (3), OK (7), OZ (2) and SM (2). The best contact was between G8P and OK1KCR at 1031km.

For the fifth year European entry logs were used as part of the adjudication process. These logs are very useful for helping to identify errors in the more challenging QSOs. Logging accuracy was slightly worse this year with 7.4% of all QSOs being disallowed (5.1% in 2016).  A number of leading stations lost less than 4% of their scores, while other stations in the top three of their sections lost between 5% and 16% of their claimed scores. One entrant has been permitted to withdraw his log after it was discovered (using a SDR recording of significant portions of the contest) that this station was not single operator even though the entry had been submitted to a single operator section. Also, four entries were disallowed due to listing non-RSGB members as operators.

Only a few reports of poor and wide signals were received.  Most of these appear to be isolated cases.  Please remember that while it may appear that there is a problem with a transmission, the effect can also be caused by the receiver being unable to cope with very strong signals so please check your receiving system carefully before complaining!

Congratulations to:

• Parallel Lines G8P for winning the Open section for the twelfth year running and hence they retain the Mitchell-Milling Trophy
• Gordon MM0GPZ/P is awarded the Thorogood Trophy for being the highest scoring single operator
• Mick M0ICK/P for winning the Single Operator (Others) section
• Roger G3MEH for winning the Single Operator (Fixed) section
• Reigate ATS and Crawley ARC G3M for winning the Six-hour (Others) section
• Russ M0WYB for winning the Six-hour Single Operator Fixed section

These stations together with those identified in the results tables will receive certificates.

Ian G0FCT