My first visit to the Channel Islands of Guernsey, Sark and Jersey was for a holiday with my XYL Judy in June 2023. We drove the 315 miles to Poole in Dorset and after an overnight stay in a Premier Inn there, travelled over to Guernsey by boat, a three hour journey on Condor Ferries. This trip was a holiday, with three activations planned. Guernsey Island is 9 miles long and 3 miles wide, small than Jersey and not as commercialised.
On board Liberation - the faster of the boats used to get from England and France to the Channel Islands
The next day after arriving, there was time for an activation of Guernsey Airport GU/GU-002. This is a drive on summit. My activation took place around 400m from the airport perimeter fence at the side of a field on Rue de lāeglise at 49.429N 2.595W (Point 1 on map below). The nearby German Occupation WW II Museum closes at 1.00pm each day, so in an afternoon the place is deserted and is fine for parking. The museum itself is also within the activation zone. I would recommend a visit to the museum, if only to view the vast array of German communication equipment on display there. We spent a few hours there on another day:
I have to thank Mike GU4EON for surveying the summit prior to me arriving on Guernsey and finding a suitable place for my activation. Mike is the owner of Guernsey car registration 5973 - a number he chose when he got his driving licence several decades ago. In Guernsey the car registrations are numbers only.
Point 1 is where I set up my station - 400m from the airport car park
After receiving no callers on 2m FM using my handheld and whip, I started up at 1245z on 40m SSB and worked a couple of S2S stations - HB9/DL6GCA/P Armin (HB/NW-017) and 2E0BIA/P Martin (G/SP-004). After a handful of contacts I went temporarily QRT as Mike GU4EON joined me, bringing with him a piece of amateur radio equipment, and we did a deal on the summit - was this the first time on a summit that money had changed hands for a piece of radio equipment I wondered?
I had placed an advert on a website wanting to buy a secondhand microKEYER, a now obsolete accessory that utilises the K1EL systems WinKeyer. Mike GU4EON happened to have one that was not being used and by chance the holiday in Guernsey gave me a chance to collect the unit while I was there, right in the middle of my activation!
The microKEYER I bought from GU4EON on GU/GU-002 now in use at G4OBK
Operation position - Rue de lāeglise is the other side of the hedge
My usual station - KX3, link inverted vee dipole 5m AGL
Having said goodbye to Mike the activation continued after an hiatus of 20 minutes. After around an hours operating time I went QRT having completed 52 contacts all within Europe. It had been well worth carrying the picnic table and two folding chairs into the field - a comfortable activation with my XYL sat reading her book some 50m away from me, using a golf umbrella as a shelter from the sun.
Mike told me that the actual summit, a few metres higher than were I operated from, was a man-made mound of earth adjacent to the airport car park, so after the activation and before we went to look at a WW II German Observation Tower to the west side of the island, I went over to the airport to photograph the highest point of GU/GU-002:
We stayed in Guernsey for five nights, but visited Sark and Le Moulin GU/GU-001 a few days into our stay. I will report on that activation next.
