In reply to 2E0FSR:
Sorry to hear about the fall Chris! Hope you get better ASAP!
Well done on the radio though! All in all Myself and Chris G4VCH managed about 15 QSOs on 70cms, 12 of which were on SSB! We had several S2S with stations in WB land, NP, CE and SP!
Furthermore we had had some success on 23cm FM, we both worked Graham G4FUJ in Cheltenham! For Chris this was his first ever 23cm contact, during his many years on planet Earth he has never gone that fast in MHz so i think he was very pleased!!
All in all it was a good day, mild weather, no wind and no rain made the occasion very manageable!
I hope that we can have Low Band VHF Fun Day in the Summer! There was talk of June 5th! I have alerted for then! I know there will be plenty of lads in the South Shropshire area to work people, so it should be fun!
I was running 30 watts to the 6 el SOTA beam, so probably the power
difference enabled you to hear me but not the other way round.
Thanks Walt. Yes, I think a little homebrew linear might be in order - I’ll think about one for 70cm! I find the 25 - 30W I run with the 2m linear makes a difference much more than I would expect purely from power considerations. After all, it’s only just over 1 S point in old money!
These fun days do seem to raise activity. Though maybe these single band fun days might be better if the were just VHF/UHF fun days. That would give 6M, 4M, 2M, 70cm and 23cm. What do others think?
I will find a summit for the 50MHz fun day for the 5th June. If there is any Sporadic E about that could be really interesting. I will be taking my 2M/70cm yagi along too.
I would include 10 metres, myself, the antenna is relatively small, Es is very frequent in summer, and the sunspot count is increasing so F2 might start to ackle. Otherwise, yes, the DC bands need no help!
I like to hear activity on all VHF bands! However you would agree that 4m and 6m is relatively quiet most of the time. At home, I have a Triband colinear and a plethora of rigs that will do 6m FM, yet when I call on 51.51MHz the FM Calling Channel I never raise anyone! 4m is not so quiet on the other hand in the South Shropshire area, there is about 8 of us on the band!!!
It is bewildering to me why we have these Multiband and Multimode rigs yet no one will use 6m FM. It is excellent over long distances even when the band is flat, just look at the coverage of the 6m repeaters!
However like yourself if people want to take other bands that is fine by me, but an emphasis on the Low Bands (Especially 6m FM) would be ace IMHO
Hi, Matt. I am a six metre devotee but I never ever listen on FM! If the band is doing its thing I am on SSB. If it isn’t doing its thing then I am sitting on the SSB calling frequency waiting for the sun to come out! I’ll take the occasional spin around the beacons, but never around the repeaters. There is a subtle change in the background noise that tells you that the band is about to open, when I hear that I tune around the beacons more frequently and might try the odd CQ if any continental beacons break through the noise, but all on horizontally polarised sideband.
In reply to MM0FMF:
Cheers for the qso Andy, nice finally catch you on, even better on UHF!
Well I had a great weekend. With a mega pile up to the states and even DX calling me I stopped just shy of 1000qso’s on Saturday. Then an early start 0430utc to head down to Ben Chonzie. Why it’s labelled a boring Munro I’ll never know. Walking up from loch turret dam then up the gulley at the end of the valley certainly made it much fun.
I’ve not submitted the log yet but when I do I’ll be sending a mail over to Barry to claim the 100pts activator award. And possibly the chaser 100 too if there was enough points from the s2s contacts.
So for me anyway it’s been a successful and enjoyable weekend.
Cheers
Adrian
MM0TAI
I with Brian G8ADD on 6M. The FM portion is very quiet around these parts. When I’m on 6M I also check the beacons and I often monitor 50.150. I only have a Diamond V2000 Tri-band co-linear yet my DXCC count for 6M stands at 36. I bagged Cyprus for a new one last year. When the band is open signals are VERY strong and have to be witnessed to be believed. I have friends who tune around 6M and complain the band is quiet. Patience is the key.
So, regarding the next fun day I’m happy to make it a 50Mhz fun day and concentrate activity on that band. I will be using a dipole for the SSB portion and my VX7R for FM.
So, regarding the next fun day I’m happy to make it a 50Mhz fun day
and concentrate activity on that band. I will be using a dipole for
the SSB portion and my VX7R for FM.
Prepare to be disillusioned, Chris. If the band opens up with Sporadic E, you will immediately be trampled underfoot by the many “big gun” UK stations with their 400 watts (+) and 5 element yagis. Even my 50 watts and a dipole from home are not enough to make myself heard, except on CW.
I can’t agree, Walt, as when I only had an 817 and a GW0GHF long wire antenna I got loads of contacts and worked 34 entities in the course of one season. Much more important than power and antenna gain is a sense of timing, knowing exactly when to pop in your callsign. The biggest problem that I had was that the antenna was more or less omnidirectional, meaning that if I was calling, say, TF, I had the whole of Europe to listen to at the same time, all calling whilst he spoke! Things got better when I installed an HB9CV, not much gain but a lovely notch at the back. Nowadays I run 100 watts from the shack and have only a small improvement in QSO rate because the one and two hop signals are mega strong, but one day I’ll put up a decent yagi for the mid season transatlantic openings. It will be better for Ar contacts, too, important now the sun has finally woken up!
Even my 50 watts and a dipole from home are not enough to make
myself heard, except on CW.
I’m a bit surprised by that, Walt - though I’m rather inexperienced on 6m.
Last year during an “Es” opening in June I had 59 reports from stations in Austria, Slovenia and Poland, with 59++ from Sweden (a good old rag chew there). I was running 50W from my homebrew linear (on batteries!) plus FT817 and a homebrew 3-ele Yagi from sea level (OK the antenna was at 12m!) in south west Scotland. That’s what I will take /P if I get out for the “50MHz fun day”.
Mind you I’m the one who usually sees the glass as half full!
I have an interest in 6m FM. As a novice we were allowed 6m and 70cm. 6m could allow for DX and I had an FM only handheld. I never worked any DX, or anyone at all for that matter.
Last summer I made some decent contacts to Europe on ssb but still no FM. I would finally like to realise the potential of working DX on a handheld. It shouldn’t even require much of an antenna - I have also only a collinear.
Only 2 contacts in this area, the English/North Welsh border. I went to a minor summit in the Berwyns for about 90 minutes and only found on USB, Terry, GW0EZY, whom I had alerted that morning, he was in QSO from home in Adfa with Alan, G7RHF, in South Shropshire. The fact I had to use a rubber duck, having not completed the 4:1 balun for my quadruple quad, was probably unhelpful. Next time! I look forward to more fun days regardless.
The FM repeaters were sadly underused even though I received had an end-stopping signal from, and managed to open, several of them.
Anyway, ice-packs would have been really beneficial for your knee but who on earth carries bags of ice around with them?
Perseids 1993 using voice MS, 1min periods, random with TF/G4DHF/P 1900km. Worked them on a massive burst that lasted over a minute. Dave was so slick he worked about 4 people on that one meteor. It was a masterclass in how to operate 2m.
I was so pleased I’d worked them. Unbelievably pleased. So to be sure I did it again 45mins later using the club’s callsign Much harder the second time though.
I didn’t know you had such interest in VHF Andy. TF on 2M is impressive.
I have dabbled in MS and FSK myself this year using WSJT. In fact if you were to look me up on qrz.com my logbook is at the bottom of the page and you will notice where my radio preference lies.
Much harder the second time though.