Winter Storms here in West Wales. IO72

So far this winter…Storm Darragh detroyed my HF Doublet and ripped quite a few tiles of the roof.
Storm Eowyn has snapped my fibreglass vertical I had tuned for 20mtrs. This now leaves me with just my 2 ele Moxon for 28mhz which thankfully I can lay down in storms due to it being on an easy mast that swivells down. We were only on the edge of Eowyn and we had gust’s of 70-80mph of the sea here. Ireland recorded a gust of 114mph and at the time of typing Scotalnd is waiting for the full force to hit. And we are only in January it makes you wonder whats next? So until things calm down here i’m not going to be very active on HF until I rig something up.

Don GW0PLP.

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Bad luck Don :unamused:
So it seems that the bulk of your property remains in good order. I hope that is the case for all our friends in Ireland and Scotland. I rather doubt we shall hear from any of them today.
The wind was unpleasant here (southern edge of IO82) but not destructive - unlike a few years back when ridge tiles crashed through the carport roof. (No aerials in those days. The mast is still lying on the “lawn” where it was lowered on Wednesday.)
Hope you will have a decent inerval before the next one.
73,
Rod

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Ouch, I‘m sorry to hear that! I hope the doublet isn‘t too hard to mend.

We lost some trees, plenty of branches and a few roof tiles during Storm Darragh, but considering the carnage in the tiny woodland down the road, I think we were lucky! Just been up to fix the slates today, actually.

Did you have that nasty squall on Thursday morning too? Storm Eowyn wasn‘t that bad here, but still sent a half-full plastic jerry can flying across the yard! One of my beehives got knocked over, as well, but nothing too bad. We‘re on high ground, so they are all strapped up and weighed down.

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Hi All,

survived here better than many. Had tower and vertical cranked over. No damage to property but was without electricity from 02:30 Friday until 17:30 Saturday.
Other Hams were not so lucky, I know of a couple of yagis (including one tilted over) badly damaged and others destroyed. A couple of towers damaged and one bent over to the ground in County Roscommon. One very active ham returned home after a night shift to find two trees through his roof.
Currently there are still some 400,000 premises without electricity with an estimated time frame of a week for restoration. And, another storm bears down.
The curse of living in interesting times

Declan
EI6FR

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Hi All,
I have left the 28mhz 2 ele Moxon down & tilted over for now and as i’m typing this Sunday morning it’s blowing again building up as the next storm blows in. The WX has gone mad this winter. Declan sorry to hear about the guys over their losing antennas and worse stay safe. The electric stayed on this time, But with storm Darragh it was off for 5 days here. I can make another doublet when things calm down for awhile and may even try making something else? So I’m only on 145mhz & 70cms for now. Rod my tiles stayed on this time but a few of the other house’s in my street were not so lucky. A site I use to watch and track the weather is below if anyone is interested & it’s pretty spot on for me.
https://www.ventusky.com

73’ Don

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All year…
28 trips up GW/NW-043 last year and the track was flooded at some point on all but 1 occasion.

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Friends out in the hills west of Dublin had power out for 34 hours, then it came back for 5 hours, and then it went again, and the power company’s estimate is it should be restored by mid-afternoon next Tuesday…

Edit Wednesday morning, earliest …

Sorry to hear Don hope you get up and running again soon. You have certainly had a rough time recently. Thankfully we pretty much got away with the worst of it here in Newport.
73s John

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We didn’t have it too bad, just a few massive gusts around 90mph and the average around 35mph. I’ve been out “dogging” yesterday and today. On today’s route there were at least 10 trees down on one of my regular walks. Some quite large Pine trees which do come down easily due to their shallow surface roots. Anyway I took my 8in folding pruning saw with me which was very useful in removing branches so myself and the hound could get past.

There’s a country grid 3 phase 33 kV line that runs across farmland then into the woods( the type on wooden poles). Just before it enters it changes to a single 3 phase insulated cable that runs in a forest break. I often walk in this break and have looked to see what I always thought were trees that need thinning out. Guess what, 3 trees have broken at their bases and are laying on the cable. The footpath is closed here with warnings as the cable is still up and may even be live still. No doubt it’s to be sorted but is probably way down the priority list.

We did get our roads well gritted in the snow the week before the storm. I had my windows cleaned before the storm. Now my windows look like the tops of glasses someone is going to serve Tequila in! However, if the worst to report is dirty windows and some disruptions to my dog walks then we got off very lightly compared to many.

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John,
Things have calmed down a bit on the coast here, So got the Moxon back up yesterday so only on 145mhz, 28mhz & maybe 24mhz HF if it will tune up. So any 28mhz ssb/cw Sota contacts would be appricated here.

73’ Don

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