October…
VHF…
Not much 2m activity to report this month, 2m seems to have quietened up here locally over the last couple of months. SOTA outings were limited to one activation because of the weather which was rain, rain and more rain…The only SOTA activation was the one of Minch Moor ( see further down the present blog page ) activated with Graeme, 2M0GIL on a dour chilled day. I SOTA ‘chased’ 2M0/P Neil on Ben Ledi , Graeme 2M0GIL/P on Ben Vane and finally, John, GM8/P on Broomy Law, activity has been curtailed by the aforementioned weather, Robin GM7/P is now back on the activation trail but due to commitments (golf …mmmm) I missed his activations.
HF…
20m is where I have been mostly operating, still trying out data modes, mostly psk31 but a flirtation with RTTY on occasion, I have also been ‘working’ 30m but concentrating mostly on 20m, working roughly 30 plus countries, the regular Europeans with some new countries being worked….Senegal, Canada, Madeira Is. and Australia. The Australian station was a special event station based in Elizabeth, South Australia, VI50LZ, I saw the faint trace on the waterfall and read that they were calling ‘cq’ , I sent a ‘me to them’ stream and next saw the GA7something being typed out back to me, quick exchange of infos and left them to work a pile up of Europeans.
I had intended to get some HF antenna work but a mixture of weather and ‘let’s just use what works’ won the day. I hope the weather stays dry and mild this winter and hopefully get some HF/Portable practice in for next summer, the long term forecast looks like I’ll be home bound though.
I have a dipole cut for 40m that is in my loft space/outside which runs from NW to SE that is lying redundant, I ‘borrowed’ the coax from it to use for another project if I replace the coax then this will do as a receive only antenna although the local noise levels on the HF bands are horrendous, there is much activity happening to ‘investigate’ on HF.
aching legs and CQ 