SUMMER WHINE 2010

Competing Stations
Position	Unit Name	Phase				Claimed	Variation	Points	Remarks
		1	2	3	4
1st	City of London School CCF	52	66	220	49	387	-27	360
2nd	Bridlington School CCF	47	60	170	55	333	-1	332
3rd	Hampshire & IOW ACF, C Coy	46	87	175	59	367	-38	329
4th	Reading School CCF	47	21	205	45	318	-19	299
5th	Dollar Academy CCF	48	42	150	36	276	-1	275
6th	Maidstone Grammar School CCF	16	39	130	40	225	-2	223	Well presented logs
7th	Churchers College CCF	20	36	120	46	222	0	222
8th	Sir Roger Manwood's School CCF	9	33	135	41	218	-1	217	Well presented logs
9th	Essex ACF, D Coy	30	45	125	14	214	0	214	Well presented logs
10th	Dorset ACF, Blandford Det	27	18	100	38	183	0	183
	Hampshire & IOW ACF, A Coy	11	12	120		143	-6	137	No log sheet for phase 4
	Essex ACF	37	54	40	0	131	-6	125	No master claim for phase 4
	Devon ACF	14	36	35	28	113		113	No log sheets submitted
	1213 Squadron ATC	16	45	0	28	89		89
	Net Monitor	7	27	0	8	42		42
No Logs Submitted
	Bournemouth School CCF

Comments from the Organiser

Warmest congratulations to City of London School CCF who are this year's winners. Just look at the scores of the first five stations to see how close the competition was. Bridlington CCF (last year's winners) was 2nd and it was good to see Hants & Isle of Wight ACF (C Coy) in 3rd place. 16 logs were submitted along with three Network Monitors. Bournemouth School CCF were very active but unfortunately failed to submit their claim.

Log keeping on the whole was very good. Two stations attempted (several times) to claim for one-way contacts... but that just isn't fair, is it? There were several instances of stations passing traffic at times which were not commensurate with the time of the message recorded in their log sheets and those messages were disallowed. Every contact made by five leading stations was scrutinised along with 15% of all other exercise traffic from all other stations. Recording of Time varied quite considerably on computer generated logs; one station recorded to '3 places of decimals' (2130.000hrs) and another was, perhaps, on "Boeing" Time (717hrs)!

Wooden spoons for handwriting must go to Reading School CCF and Bridlington School CCF whose drunken spiders really worked overtime to produce their respective Master Claim Forms!

Thank you to everyone who took part, particularly the lower scoring stations who all contributed significantly to the success of the competition.

Finally, my thanks to Mr J Wresdell for again submitting his comprehensive network monitoring log... not much gets past his experienced ears!

Some of Your Comments

Lt Col Townend - Unfortunately my time was somewhat limited so I did not spend as long as I would have wished either monitoring or joining in.
I started listening at 1538 hearing nothing. Found two nets at 1543 - both a bit 'messy'. Timings given by some stations seemed very much off beam. Went back at 1556 where I heard a clear call from Dollar Academy CCF to which I responded.
Reasonable net going at 1604. Moved through frequencies where I made contact with City of London School CCF. Moved to another frequency at 1620 and again contacted City of London School CCF and Dorset ACF; Dollar Academy CCF were also on frequency but UNW to me.
Next session was in the evening. Worked through all the frequencies.
Re-opened 0840. 0846 had contact with Dorset ACF. 0929: NIL.
Main comments:

1. The usual offering of messages and "My message to you is..."
2. One control station I heard spent well over 5 minutes trying to establish a net - perhaps they thought you have to have five stations. Radio Check after Radio Check with no response.

Essex ACF, D Coy - Our understanding of the rules was that while there were 2 scoring zones each day you were only allowed to exchange messages with a station once per freq/day. My cadets were concerned that this may have encouraged some stations to keep their 'powder dry' until 21:00 hrs on Saturday and to pack up after 05:00hrs on Sunday. The cadets' suggestion was that stations be allowed to exchange messages once per frequency in each of the 4 different point scoring periods.

Dollar Academy CCF - Dollar Academy CCF greatly enjoyed the experience. Six cadets, 3 rookies and 3 'golden oldies' took part. The site used was a flattish bit of a 750 acre hill farm at about 1000' facing south. The equipment used was a 40m doublet (antenna) with twisted feeder into a supplementary Z match ATU into a bog standard PRC 320. The doublet was supported by 3 x 18' masts issued with the SR A13. The third mast was really a clothes-prop placed in the centre of the doublet, which took the strain off the end masts. Over 130 contacts were made over the 24 hours. The cadets had great fun and contacts were made from Cornwall northwards. The gap in contacts between 0742 and 1000hrs wasn't due to propagation or falling asleep, but due to flat batteries and it took a little time to organise spares.

Net Monitor Scotland - Voice Procedure. "My message is" (or variants) continued right through the 24 hours as did "Offering of Messages". "Hull0 B this is A Message Over". This type of voice procedure was declared obsolete in about 1986. All cadets seem to know this. Who teaches obsolete VP?

1213 Sqn ATC - We were only able to compete as part timers. The cadet who was to have come on Saturday afternoon failed to turn up. Saturday evening and Sunday morning was covered by two cadets, both inexperienced at HF working and the Army Voice Procedure, so I think they made a respectable score.
One or two net controllers did not "control", closed the net before all had finished sending and did not list stations on net. Also heard a few "My message to you..." (not required) and "repeat" rather than "say again". A good competition that my cadets enjoyed.

Churcher's College CCF - Although we were not technically in the field, we set everything up more or less from scratch in our cadet HQ. The team seemed to have enjoyed the exercise. Our team comprised 2 Cpl, 1 LCpl (male), 1 Cdt (female). Our antennae could have been better... we used 1 x 36m end fed and 1 x dipole for 3 MHz.
I had misgivings about the date of the competition but in the event I was pleasantly surprised by our turnout of cadets and the number of stations participating.

Points system:	Fair.
Conditions:	Very good.
Adult involvement:	Minimal supervision required.

Bridlington School CCF - We deployed to a field location approx 10 mile from our School on the Saturday morning. Setting up took a little longer as this year; we had a very young team all willing to learn, apart from one A Level student who managed to effectively study during Sat then borrow her dad's car to drive out and join us for the long evening shift. The 320 proved itself yet again being our No 1 set. The WOTAN unfortunately proved unreliable due to battery issues. A great time was had by all cadets especially the younger ones.

Competition organiser - Maj(Retd) T Sugdon