3.5MHz Autumn Series - November CW results

This was the last Autumn Series CW contest for 2023 and also the final session for the series.  As with the third session last year the propagation was not favourable for inter-G working with the critical frequency below 3.5MHz from the start.  A number of stations made no contacts at all in the last quarter of the session, either by giving up or just not hearing anything to work.  UK&CD stations located well away from the centre of activity therefore had an advantage this time, as did those in non-UK&CD countries.

There were 159 entrants in total, almost the same as last year's final CW session, with logs received from eleven different non-UK&CD countries.  There were a further ten different overseas countries in the logs, all from Europe apart from 4W8 and 5B4.

Thanks to Terry GM3WUX for running the bonus station GM6XX from his QTH in Glasgow.  With the generally longer skip band conditions experienced, most entrants had the opportunity of making that five point bonus contact.  Terry made the highest individual total of 135 QSOs from his QTH in Glasgow, but even he reported that the skip went very long after 21.00.

Entrants are again reminded that no transmissions must be made in the two minutes immediately preceding the start and all QSOs must be completed before the end.  A wideband SDR recording was used to check for any violations, a few were found and penalties applied.  Please ensure your clock is accurately set before the start to avoid that 'Broken - Time' in your UBN.

As this is the last contest in the series the overall club awards for 2023 have been finalised.  The list below shows the awards in the Local and General club categories together with the individual certificates for the three CW sessions.  The SSB and DATA individual certificates can be viewed by navigating to the appropriate page.  The final table of overall individual scores shows Dave G3TBK the leader for the seventh successive year accumulating 8457 points for Grimsby ARS from the nine sessions with Tim G4ARI as runner-up with 8357 points.  The leading Intermediate station is Tim 2E0TJX with Steve M7WLT as the highest placed Foundation Licensee.  The leading non-UK&CD entrant is Yuri DF1MM.  Thanks to Yuri and all the non-UK&CD stations for their continued support, over the nine sessions there were 74 entrants from overseas, one more than last year.

Congratulations to the Trophy and all the Certificate winners and we look forward to the 2024 Club Championship starting on Monday 5th February with the SSB contest.

John G4CZB