Myself, as a member of the “Three Gentlemen of The Lothians” will be as far North as you can go in mainland UK then. I’m not sure there will be any UHF activity but we will be active HF and probably 2m (for chasing each other).
Alerts to follow as we see the weather details on arrival in the IO78 & IO88 area.
I’ll try and give 70cm a quick tickle on Saturday from the usual spot by the sea. If the WX behaves itself that is. It’s been a mixed bag here in EI this week. Monday was particularly poor weather, verging on a storm.
We’re looking in half decent shape though for the weekend so we’ll see. If anyone fancies a cheeky nibble at some UHF CW we could give that a try during 433 Alive hours too?
Aside, there was talk on the IRTS news this week that we might be in for a bit of lift towards the weekend, so you never know!
Promising propagation opportunities are expected to develop towards the latter end of the week. An arriving shift in weather patterns, with high pressure beginning to build from the south and southwest, is forecast to create stable atmospheric temperature inversions.
Operators on the 2-metre, 70-centimetre, and higher microwave bands are encouraged to monitor local and international beacons, as well as the usual FT8 and SSB calling frequencies, for signs of opening paths across the Irish Sea.
So we could be in for some seriously juicy 270 action this weekend. Stand by your All Moders!
There is one quite major issue with that. You’d need to send at 1letter per minute while I look up each letter in a book or something I could try to use the phone but never had much success.
But if we do make contact on SSB or something, I would give you a signal report if you wanted to send some CW as a comparison. I may not understand the letter, but I can still read the S meter
350 miles or so with who knows how much mass of granite between us, but stranger things have happened. You may have slightly better chance with EI3LH due to a little more sea. I’ll certainly point your way.
If the wind plays ball I’ll take the 19 element out otherwise it will be the 5element section of an arrow antenna.
If I’m really lucky, I’ll have the 19ele horizontal and the 5 element vertical.
And if I am really really lucky, I will remember to take the rig with me
If it means a 70cm CW QSO then let’s go! Or we could do a cross mode QSO?
WX in EI is all over the place again today. Doesn’t know what it wants to do with itself. Hopefully we can shake it off for the weekend.
Keep the ear to the ground for the first signs of anyone reporting some juicy 270 action to fire the starting gun on the lift and we’ll all be off and running!
I’ve some stuff to do up in NI on Saturday so if any MI folks are around I’ll try and work a few while pootling around. Hoping to get up to the Mourne Mountains area but not sure yet.
Anyways, here’s to some Super 70 action this weekend. Restore greatness to UHF!
I’ll certainly be up for it whatever. Would be interesting to see what the “heard” difference between signals would be CW vs SSB. I am fairly sure the CW would be (all things being equal) more discernable from a radio point of view.
If you do send CW and I don’t reply for a few seconds, it probably means I’m tapping furiously away at a phone screen but don’t let that stop you
The same day but in VHF and UHF Will be running the XXII ARAM V-UHF 2026 contest. From 14h-23h GMT. Saturday 23 of May.
Turn your antennas south to CT, EA, CT3, EA8 and CT8. Who knows if Tropo does the miracle… Colleagues of this áreas Will be active for this contest as other years. You Will find stations in CW/SSB and/or in FM also.
I Will be in CT/MN-003. V-UHF SSB, my friend Luis CU2IJ Will be in CU/SM-002 V-UHF in CW/SSB, You Will find some others from other SOTA references sure….
I could try to use the phone but never had much success.
