Thursday 21st February 2019 - Gun G/SP-013 & Shining Tor G/SP-004
There was little chance of answering the question “30m - what can it do?” - not when I’d left the 10m Travelmast at home! I’d been a sensible chap for once, taking my pole in from the car after a damp activation, wiping it down with towels and storing it with the end caps off. Unfortunately, this change in MO caused me to forget that the mast wasn’t it in the car as I left the house!
No problem I thought, instead I’ll check out the Youkits HB1B CW transceiver. Richard G3CWI had kindly repaired this for me a few days earlier. I was very pleased as the rig had been out of action for a long time, and it is a favourite of mine that I really enjoy operating with. Anyway, that plan was soon as dead as the 30m plan, once I realised I hadn’t thought to bring any earbuds out with me (the HB1B doesn’t have a speaker).
So there I was at the parking spot for Gun, in my car, with unexpected heavy rain lashing down. Both my radio agenda items were not possible - see above - and I even thought about going home activationless. I then started to think about nipping up to the summit with the HT and just putting up with the weather for half-an-hour or so.
Then the rain stopped and the skies began to clear. I decided to do an activation on good old 20m using another of my groundplane antennas. The going was fairly slow, but a variety of modes allowed a respectable number of contacts to enter the SOTA log.
20m SSB: 3 QSOs
20m CW: 5 QSOs
20m FT8: 6 QSOs
2m FM: 4 QSOs
A change of plan at home and a glorious sunny afternoon gave me the opportunity, and idea to have another crack at testing out my 30m GP and HB1B. I invited Richard G3CWI out on the trip, more for his antenna analyser than his company between you-and-me, but don’t tell him that. Main thing is that I did remember to take the Travelmast and earbuds out of the house this time.
The walk up Shining Tor was very pleasant in the sunshine, but there was a fair bit of breeze which concerned me with regard to deploying a 10m mast. We checked some mapping to determine the extent of the AZ on the lee (north) side of the hill, and continued downslope after the summit to get a little more shelter. We found a good flattish grassy spot to the right of the path, and where we determined the wind would not be too disruptive to the large vertical antenna.
The aerial went up and was found to be resonant on 9.6MHz. I cut off some of the vertical element, and the CF moved up to 9.880MHz. Repeat a couple of times, and I got it to 10.110MHz - perfect! I verified that the SWR indication on the FT-817 was good right across the band, and started activating.
9 QSOs were made on 30m CW, and everything seemed to be working nicely. I then swapped the FT-817 for the HB1B, and thoroughly enjoyed using that rig for the first time in nearly two years. It’s such a pleasant rig to use, and 5 more 30m CW QSOs were made.
Walking back over the summit on the way back to the car, I put out a few calls on 2m FM with the handheld, resulting in three further QSOs.
The return journey was punctuated with a refreshment stop at the Stanley Arms, Bottom o’th’ Oven. Jennings Cumberland - always a favourite for a sunny SOTA day.