Year: 2015

RSGB First 1.8MHz Contest – February

At the weekend, M0TAZ and myself took part in the first 1.8MHz Contest. We have taken part in these for a few years now, most notably 3 years ago in 6″ of snow, and last year getting the car bogged in the mud. We usually do quite well in the SSB only category, as most participants opt for CW or mixed.

Thankfully this year was mild, and not so muddy. The contest runs from 9PM to 1AM, and we used a top band dipole fed with 300Ω feeder. The centre of the dipole was at 60 ft (18m), and was of course 260ft (80m) long.

The big inverted V.

The big inverted V.

Using an Icom 7100 and 32w (the maximum for this part of the band) we managed to work 60 stations including England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Netherlands and Germany. Activity from the UK seemed to be low, perhaps due to the contest falling on Valentines day this year.

Show stoppers

It’s very easy to forget something when taking your radio gear out portable. A patch lead, a microphone, a power lead etc. can all be a show stopper. Well at the weekend, we went to Dungeness, Kent and thought we would take some radio equipment and do an hour or so of HF operating in between some photography, walking and a pub meal. Anyway, yes I forgot something…
We parked in a good spot, set up an inverted vee doublet, then I went to get the ATU. Before I even looked for it, I knew I’d forgot to bring it! Oops. We needed it to use the doublet. We had a look in the bags for some coax, but there wasn’t any, so there was no option but to take the antenna down and go to the pub. Now I usually make a check list, but this time I did not. Anyway, we still had a good day at Dungeness!

Can you spot the Orion Nebula?