I had a great morning today!
After yesterday’s activation of Cliffe Hill I took the train one stop to Southease and rested for the night at the YHA hostel. It was my second time staying at this hostel. The staff are great, the rooms are clean and the location is nice. I woke up nice and early at 6am, had breakfast at the at 0830 and arrived at the summit of G/SE-010 Firle Beacon at around 1030. The weather today
was about 12C, sunny and calm 5-10mph winds.
I already activated Firle Beacon earlier this year on 2m FM using my FT1D and portable HB9CV (I learned a lot about how much difference a beam antenna can make as I made a few 150-170mi QSOs that day to France, Jersey and across England) so no points for today. I like the summit and enjoyed the walk, plus I’ve never done it on HF and want to get as much use as possible with my new KX3 before winter.
The walk along the South Downs way is very pleasant and straight forward.
I hooked up my RigExpert Stick 230 to the wire antenna to take some measurements. The antenna is around 15.5m long with 4.5m counterpoise using an LDG 9:1 unun in an inverted-V configuration using a sotabeams carbon-6 mast and a ground stake with no guy ropes. I’ve heard some people say the 9:1 unun is not required with the KX3 because the tuner is so good, so next time I will test the antenna’s performance without the unun.
The antenna has decent SWR on 80/30/20/17/15/12/10 and around 4.5:1 on 40m. I wanted take advantage of this multiband antenna and try some 17m, else I’m better off just using an end fed half wave for 40/20/15 I think.
I moved between 40m, 20m, 17m, 15m and had my 50th QSO on 2m. 15m was quite quiet but I called CQ a few times and spotted myself and created some activity which was nice.
It was fairly busy with Sunday walkers today but I found myself a quiet spot just behind the trig point where nobody really comes and set up my station. I enjoyed soaking up the sun and looking out to the Channel.
I had never used 21MHz until the CQWW SSB contest on the weekend and I find myself really enjoying it. I’m still surprised at how well 10W can do on this band.
Thank you to all the chasers who made this activation possible, I really enjoyed it.
73, 2E0HXS, Hamzah
yes, hope we can get a S2S.