Summer evening RF fun – and inspiration!
More sunny Tuesday evenings extended Wythall Radio Club’s portable operation from the lawn outside our base.
On our third week of activity, we had three stations operational.
The Club call GX4WAC/P was activated using Neil G1TZC’s portable satellite gear.
This resulted in an impromptu net through the geostationary satellite QO-100 with DJ4FF (Robert), HB9FIY (Chris) and our new Club member Garry ZD7GWM.
The station was the usual ground-station with the 60cm folding dish. The Goonhilly webSDR was used on receive because the satellite was partially obscured by a tree, but the up-link signal into QO-100 was enough to be given a 58 signal report from receiving stations.
Martin 2E0XFI/P set up on another part of the lawn and was delighted with the results using his IC705 and 17 foot-long telescopic vertical, achieving 5 watt FT8 QSOs with Indonesia and 3W9A Vietnam.
To complete the trio of stations, Chris G3YHF/P brought a home-made 20m delta loop on an 8m pole.
With Ian, M0LQY, he worked around Europe on the key and had a very pleasant chat with Torgen SA5TBE on SSB – 59 both ways.
Finally, the light faded, the midges came out and the lawn was emptied of kit and activity.
But that’s not the end of the story!
Our portable lightweight antennas inspired Ian M0LQY to search the SOTABEAMS web-site, where he found a design for a multi-band doublet.
Quickly purchasing some lightweight SOTABEAMS cable and spaces, he had one constructed within an hour.
For the doublet centre, he crafted a small piece of plastic tube with two holes drilled in it and a cable tie to fit the top of a telescopic mast.
The following week the doublet was quickly raised on Chris G3YHF’s 8m telescopic mast.
The mast survived some bending as the two doublet legs were untangled – as the photo shows! But within a few minutes we were on the air.
Using an FT817 and small auto-atu, a very low SWR achieved on the higher HF bands and 5 watts of FT8 gave PSK-Reporter spots across Europe.
Even as dusk turned to night, members – and visiting RSGB District Representative Martin M0JZT – could be seen discussing the results of Ian’s experiments.
Members went home for an early night or retired inside the Wythall clubhouse for refreshment, and to continue sharing experiences and ideas.
Very pleasant evenings!
Our Club meets every Tuesday evening and visitors are always welcome there and at our special events, the programme for which is on our web site.
Our next big event will be ‘Plug and Play’ on Sunday 8th September on the rugby pitch behind the Wythall House complex.
Members will be bringing along their own equipment to operate, using power kindly provided by Martin G8VXX’s generator. Come and visit!