This will be the last outing in 2026 for the special callsign in memory of Gavin G6DGK, as I have unfortunately had to cancel the Railways SES at the end of September due to a change in my availability. I'll try to get the call back on the air again next year.
As an aside, I'm also thinking of maybe GB4XAT some time in 2027 - perhaps for Mills or Battleships weekend - in memory of Bob N4XAT. I'd like to do something, but I'm not sure what yet.
Anyway, I had a pleasant afternoon out at Ardingly reservoir yesterday, where the weather was changeable but generally favourable overall, and band conditions were similar. 40m was doing its usual thing, but I made a good sprinkling of contacts on both SSB and FT8, plus a few more on 17m.
I made an unusual percentage of contacts into Scotland - a whole string of them - and I'm guessing it had something to do with having a large (or maybe not so large) body of water directly between the front (...and to the north) of my in-car shack and our friends north of the border. Slightly disconcerting, but it was an interesting phenomenon all the same.
I broke out my SGC SG-230 ATU for the day, but for some reason, it really did not want to tune my 8m or so of wire, though it was perfectly happy to do so on just about every other band, including top band. The best it could manage on 40m was a post-tune result of about 2:1 SWR, and of course my radio (Yaesu FT-710) wouldn't even try to match that poor excuse for an antenna on its own. I ended up using both ATU's inline together to get the radio to push 100w out at what it saw as a 50 ohm load. Perhaps somebody more knowledgeable can tell me why this was a bad idea, and how I've likely sent some otherwise perfectly good hardware to the ATU graveyard in the Ionosphere, but it got me the contacts I wanted on the day with fair signal reports. I'll do some more testing at home on some different lengths of wire to make sure everything's OK.
Nothing else out of the ordinary to report on the event front, but I can tell you that Ardingly Reservoir is looking pretty crispy around the edges, as you can see in my last photo.
Oh, and by the way, there is absolutely no O2 4G mobile signal out there, so I was flying a bit blind all afternoon! That's the first time that has happened to me at a UK outdoor station setup, and it took me a while to accept that fact. My router is dual-SIM with failover, so I'll throw an EE card in the other slot as backup before my next outing, because I felt about as exposed as the current Chelsea back three.
Finally, huge thanks go to Stefan and the rest of the hard-working crew at Nunsfield House ARG for putting on such a well run event again this year. A credit to the hobby, and a pleasure to work with them.
Catch you all soon, and my thoughts are with those individual club members who are currently having a particularly tough time.
Berni M0XYF
