Tag: Dungeness

Show stoppers

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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?

Operating HF from Dungeness ☢

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I just got back from a couple of days on the South coast. I spent a day at Birling Gap and walked up the chalk cliffs at Beachy Head, then on Monday, I spent the afternoon at Dungeness. My plan was to do some photography during the day and some HF operating at night.

After a day of strolling around this strange landscape, I finally got round to setting up the HF station. I used an 85AH Leisure Battery, Yaesu FT-897D at 100W and the antenna was an inverted V for 80m up on a 9m fibreglass pole. I was facing a fantastic sunset (and the two nuclear power stations) as can be seen below.

Parked up at Dungeness for some HF operating whilst watching the sun go down.

Parked up at Dungeness for some HF operating whilst watching the sun go down.

I used a few different bands, 40m, 60m and 80m. Conditions on 60m and 80m were great for local contacts and I got good signal reports.  It was an interesting spot to operate from. (more…)