SUMMER WHINE 2006

Competing Stations
Position	Unit Name	Sat	Sun	Total
1st	Churchers College CCF	105	307	412
2nd	The Vyne School CCF	92	260	352
3rd	City of London School CCF	128	198	326
4th	Warwick School CCF	79	231	310
5th	Bournemouth School CCF	90	213	303
6th	Maidstone GS CCF	90	146	236
7th	Essex ACF, A Coy	95	139	234
8th	Hants & IOW ACF, B Coy	68	149	217
9th	Devon ACF	73	118	191
10th	Dorset ACF, Det 2	62	110	172
11th	Sutton Valence CCF	74	97	171
12th	Dorset ACF, Det 1	67	101	168
13th	Chichester High CCF	22	51	73
14th	Wellington School CCF	36	35	71
15th	Cumbria ACF	35	7	42
16th	Queen Mary's GS CCF	14	19	33

Comments from the Organiser

Exercise SUMMER WHINE is the final exercise of the Cadet Training Year and is designed to "stretch" even the ablest cadet operator.

I was pleased to see such a good turnout, but somewhat surprised not to receive claims from more stations who took part! Some stations operated for the full exercise period - and gained significant bonus points for working through the night; others, however, stated that they could operate for specific periods only and I welcome their contributions.

A detachment's success in Exercise SUMMER WHINE can not be judged merely in terms of your "position on the ladder". Some cadet signalling detachments have many years of "enthusiastic continuity", there are always successors in the pipeline and these stations usually turn in a good performance. For others, however, this is not so; the departure of one or two key operators leaves a huge experience gap. I applaud the efforts of those stations whose cadets had only limited experience; I hope they will be encouraged to join in next year and, having gained operating experience in the coming year, do so with greater confidence.

As the new "signalling year" begins I would ask you all to WELCOME, HELP and ENCOURAGE all newcomers to National Net - do remember, we were all "new operators" once!

My congratulations to this year's winners, Churcher's College CCF, for a job well done.

Comments from Entrants

Lt Col M Vokes - One station attempted to start the competition at 13.55hrs on the Saturday and compounded its shortcoming by giving out a frequency in clear.

Radio conditions for the competition were the best for many years. The weather on Saturday was very hot but no thunder in the South. Sunday was overcast. Frequencies in the 4-5 MHz range amazingly remained operable until almost midnight. The top two frequencies were impossible for sky wave and the absence of many northern call-signs resulted in very few, if any, contacts being made. One frequency was completely obliterated by noise and consideration should be given to allowing a variation of 1 or 2 kHz on this frequency.

Voice procedure at times was NOT impressive. Far too many "repeats" and "my message to you". Callsigns using silly voices when making calls. Some cadets do not seem to realise that their transmissions travel far and wide and may be intercepted many miles away.

Churcher's College CCF - We had a very young, relatively inexperienced team without the 3 young ladies who have been our mainstay for several years. We used our new HQ as our base, but we had to put up a 10 m mast.

Chichester High School - We were on Longmoor Training Area for a CCF Field Day and set up in a tactical manner. We could only operate when not guarding our location, so did not make too many contacts. We hope we will not be last again this year. We came under attack at one stage from the RAF section Fortunately Lt Col Vokes was not visiting us just then, as he would never have got under cover in time!!

The Vyne School CCF - Our 6 cadets very much enjoyed the weekend. We had a real mixture of age and experience- from 16 - 13, from X-Flags to Radio Users. Some could only manage part time, due to jobs and even a "Leavers Ball" for one on the Saturday night - he came back on the Sunday morning somewhat bleary-eyed, but keen as mustard. There's commitment!

We had one near disaster at about 0830 Sunday. Operating with a droopy dipole suspended from a home made 8m mast; all was going well until one of the tenant farmer's men came to on feed sheep in the fields adjoining our patch. On crossing our site in a very large tractor he drove through one of our supporting lines and demolished half the dipole. Luckily the cord had only broken in one place and having untangled his tractor we were able to quickly affect a repair and continued almost without a hitch. Exit one red-faced farmer's boy!

Cumbria ACF - The 2 operators thoroughly enjoyed their first real experience of HF over significant distances.

Other non-attributable comments

. . . but applicable to many . . .

• "Some of them (the other stations) seem to be more concerned with being "in control" than actually running a directed net".
• "Does anyone monitor the competition frequencies and if so, is anything done about the poor standard of VP and the obvious attempts to bend the rules?"

And finally...

In the "real world" NOT all frequencies are perfectly clear and completely free from interference. Often - including on operations - frequencies are shared, conditions are poor, there is heavy fading and in hostile environments deliberate interference and blocking of transmissions. Whilst not wishing to impose operational conditions on Exercise SUMMER WHINE, it is not unreasonable to expect you to move to other, more usable frequencies.

Competition organiser - Major T Sugdon