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- Written by: Chris G3YTU
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Downland Radio Group invite all members of the Mid Sussex Amateur Radio Society to come along to the wonderful Railways On The Air Special Event Station at Horsted Keynes station GB0BR Saturday week, 23rd September.
There will hopefully be half a dozen of us in attendance, so please drop in and say hello.
For those able to help with this event please arrive at about 9:00 am Saturday 23rd at the top of the Car Park at Horsted Keynes Bluebell Railway Station so we can setup the tent, radio equipment, mast and antenna.
Please bring your own chair, drinks and food. The station buffet does have some refreshments but has been known to run out later in the day.
It is also the Bluebell Railway Beer Festival and both Sheffield Park and Horsted Keynes Stations will be busy with lots of visitors.
ROTA website: https://rota.barac.org.uk
GB0BR on QRZ.com: https://www.qrz.com/db/GB0BR
Best wishes
Chris G3YTU
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- Written by: Chris G3YTU
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Introduction
This year’s ILLW Special Event Radio Station GB0NL was setup in the Car Park at Newhaven West Beach by Stuart M0ABT with his recreational vehicle and table which proved to be very suitable especially as the weather was good with no sight of rain.
Radio equipment, antenna and power supply
The radio equipment and antenna provided by Stuart were as follows:
• ICOM IC-7300 HF / 50MHz transceiver
• HyEnd 8 Band 80/40/(30)/20/17/15/12/10m 131ft (40m) antenna supported between two telescopic poles at 6m AGL.
• Lead acid leisure batteries + solar panels and charger/regulator module (Stuart had added some RF ferrite chokes to the solar panel cables which seemed to have cured the noise generated on the amateur radio bands which was noticeable on 40m at a previous event).
Contacts - lighthouse stations
A total of 115 contacts were made on Saturday and 64 contacts on Sunday. A total of 15 lighthouse stations were contacted which are listed below:
There were a few other contacts that were not included in the list of ILLW registered callsigns so could not be checked easily:
The furthest lighthouse station was 9M4LHO in Malaysia.
Contacts - Other stations
A few of the other more interesting stations contacted:
• CW5X Radiogrupo Sur, Montevideo, Uruguay
• VK2GJC Greg Cogar
• VK3OZY Grant Mahoney
• VK3HX Peter Collie, Frankston, Victoria
• VK2CR Peter Richard Thomas, Sydney
• TK4TH Corsica, France
• GB0WWA Ray, South Dorset Radio Society (SDRS) to commemorate the wartime Battle of Britain airfield of RAF Warmwell as part of the RAFARS (Royal Airforce Amateur Radio Society) 'Airfields On The Air' programme.
• 9A150TEC Radio Club "KARLOVAC" 150th anniversary of Nikola Tesla's graduation from Karlovac Gymnasium and the opening of the Tesla Experience Center in Karlovac on July 1, 2023 - December 31 2023.
• TC100TC 100th Anniversary of the Republic of TÜRKİYE
• CX9ARH Roberto Gonzalez Hohn, Montevideo, Uruguay
• S79VU Ravi Pandit, Seychelles
• VP8LP Bob McLeod, Falkland Islands
Logsheets and ADIF
The GB0NL log sheets have been typed into an Excel spreadsheet and imported into the DX Shell ADIF Master program and saved as an ADIF file which has been uploaded to eQSL so that anyone who contacted us can download a QSL card automatically for contacts that they have made.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Stuart M0ABT and the others who helped setup and take down the Special Event Station radio equipment, antennas and those who helped with the operating and logging of the contacts, Philip G8KBI, Steve M7DQY, Steven M0USC, Colin G3ZAF, Andy M0CFO, Gavin G6DGK, Aharon 2E1ALC and those who turned up to make the weekend a memorable event not forgetting Vince G1FBH who captured the event on video.
Thanks also to the landowners Newhaven Port and Properties Ltd and the leaseholder Nick Jones for the use of the West Beach Promenade car park. Nick Jones made an unannounced visit to our Special Event Station on Saturday and was made very welcome to see what amateur radio special events are all about.
A selection of QSL cards
Chris Coward G3YTU
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- Written by: Chris G4ZCS
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As the sun wasn’t playing ball again at the beginning of August, I thought I would try to learn to use this FT8 thingy as it seems the most popular data-mode at present.
Most of the bands were mayhem so I picked my old favourite, 60 Meters (5 Meg'). I had only ever worked about 20 DXCCs on this band since 2002 and I was expecting a very quiet place to practice. How wrong can I be! Most of the contacts were Germany and Holland with a smattering of DX including Malaysia. Altogether 63 DXCC slots worked in less than a week. Not too bad, but my understanding of what is going on and my operating techniques need a lot more work!
As I was feeling up to it, I went to the 'nag & natter' on the 11th. It was great to see real people again if only a few. A good opportunity to catch up with the news and the scandal! To finish off a pleasant evening I had a look in the shack to see all the new shiny kit. In my opinion far too complicated for me but I bet the 'youngsters' will work wonders with all that technology. Chris was in the process of setting up the club station to work FT8 by remote control. I showed him a couple of things that had held me up when getting mine going at home. Within 10 minutes G3ZMS had made a contact with Eastern Canada, and, was then called by an American station. All safely logged electronically for QSLing later.
On the 14th, as I was feeling OK, I managed to get to Ron’s funeral. There was a good turnout from the club and it was an opportunity to catch up & reminisce about the old days.
Back to radio. For some strange reason I suddenly developed a high SWR on 21 Meg. Lots of checking; antenna and connections, feeder, antenna switch, ATU, and balun. The ATU is a remote one at the end of the garden so a bit complicated. I took off its lid and got a mild whiff of smoke. Close inspection and metering - no fault found. Then I noticed a bit of black on the antenna input socket, so I checked the balun. As I started to remove it from the weatherproof box it fell to bits! The solder joint on the coax socket was only just touching. I believe Ken had a fire in his, so I was not surprised to find signs of heat near the ferrite cores. A quick dash down to Screwfix (other retailers available) and got a new plastic box. After two hours in the workshop drilling, soldering, and sawing - hey presto a 'new' balun.
Still playing with FT8 (and now FT4) with no more than 20 Watts, I have been surprised to start getting some DX. 5 Meg gave me a CE4 in Chile, LU8 in Argentina, and I was called several times by JA’s and 3C3 in Equatorial Guinea. I was even called out of the blue by Walid, OD5ZZ in Lebanon! (We usually make contact on SSB.) Later that day, I made a contact with 3B8 on Mauritius island.
I have noted that these data-modes usually include the stations’ grid locator code as their QTH. I had never bothered to take too much notice, but the 5Meg band should really only be 'locals'. Next month I’ll elaborate, as at the time of writing I have worked well over 200 squares just in the greater European area. This could be a really useful propagation tool!
Below are the first proof of long haul propo’ on 60M.
Good DXing
Chris, G4ZCS
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Aharon and I will be at the West Beach Promenade Car Park in Newhaven for the International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend (ILLW) Special Event on Saturday 19th August 2023 - weather permitting - together with any others from the Downland Radio Group to help Stuart Little M0ABT and others from the Newhaven area setup and take-down the Special Event Station GB0NL for this event.
Members of the Mid Sussex Amateur Radio Society are welcome to come along. Please note that there is a small charge to park in the car park.
Apologies for the late notice but I was waiting to check with Stuart that everything was going ahead as planned.
Best wishes, Chris Coward G3YTU
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- Written by: Chris G4ZCS
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I’ll start this month with a short tribute to Ron, G0WGP. Ron was a great help to me in my early days with the MSARS. He was instrumental in encouraging me to learn from himself, Louis G5RV, and the many others who rapidly built up my knowledge base following my gaining my full licence. Ron’s tales of his time in the Shetland Isle’s during the war still remain with me. Thanks, Ron, RIP.
Last month I indicated that I would elaborate on 'slot chasing'. This is trying to work as many as possible. Each DXCC can be worked on each band and in three modes on each band - phone, CW and data. New starters usually aim to work 100 DXCCs (countries) followed by trying to do that on each band or on each mode. For example, working a MSARS station on say, 10m, 12m, 15m, and 20m equals 4 slots. Doing this on both phone and CW is 8 slots, and so on. There are hundreds of combinations so go on - have a try!
Just to prove that I’m wrong I decided to work this year’s IARU contest, on 15m CW only. This interesting contest has a mix of 'targets' to aim for. This year there were contest stations located in Italy all 'on a level playing field' with the same call format, such as I41A through to I49Z. I only managed 19 of these. In addition, everyone else reports their ITU zone number (UK is in 27). I managed 18 of these, and just to add to this, each DXCC had an HQ station with its abbreviation as its report (UK was RSGB). I managed 11 of these. Not too bad as conditions were terrible at the time, with dreadful QSB and local lightning storms to add to the mayhem!
Just as the month was getting going 'IT' arrived, the Rockall QSL card, an early birthday card!
Last month I mentioned the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and its usual summer activation. Well, on the 26th up they popped! From nothing to a multi-band multi-operator station. I managed an SSB contact on 17m for another new one for the year.
At the end of the month, it was the IOTA islands contest, so I had a go, but with only moderate success this time. Luckily these included several Chinese islands and a handful of North American ones that I needed.
As Autumn is just around the corner, I thought it a good time to try and set up one of these new data modes ready for the darker evenings. Having worked many stations some years back on PSK31, I thought it would be easy. However, the advances in both hardware and software have made it all 'new' to me. Fortunately my K3 is one of the favourite radios for datamodes so the instruction manuals were easy to follow. The software is downloadable from the internet, no more disks to buy!
It took over a week to get a signal out of my system, mostly because of Chemo’ induced finger trouble. When I finally succeeded, I had a surprise when I set up a session and managed to work Crawley!
Oh, and Kuwait, plus 15 or so DXCCs in one half hour.
More next month.
Good DXing
Chris, G4ZCS
