A grand day out
Warning!! Radio bit coming!!! I have only briefly dabbled with radio contesting before, mainly with a few VERY low key and none too serious attempts at the Practical Wireless VHF contest so it seemed to make sense to take it slightly more seriously this year. The rules are relatively simple, it is limited to the amateur VHF band on 144MHz with a power limit of 3 watts and running from 9.00 to 16.00 UTC (GMT) on the second Sunday of June. Some planning prior to the event netted a prime site on the (nearly) highest point of the island at Le Platon car park on the north coast (looking across the channel to France, Guernsey and Sark with the UK beyond), and a new (to me) antenna, a 10 element Yagi ‘monster’ that could just fit on the roof rack for transportation. Practice run on the Saturday afternoon picked the bones out of setting everything up (with the help of Mike and Vani) but with only one contact into the Torquay repeater, hmm, would have to do better than that!! Weather and tropo forecast for the Sunday was marginal but in the event, once I’d set up and tested everything the sun came out and it was an absolutely cracking day! I was using relatively dated equipment comprising a Yaesu FT290r mk1 with an external pre-amp but it has to be said, it could hear okay!! The old Yaesu may be slightly down on power being in excess of 25 years old now but at these levels it really is the antenna and how you use it that makes the difference. I had set myself a target beforehand, a mate of mine back on the mainland (hi Patrick) is dead keen on VHF so I set his score of last year as my ideal (24 contacts across 8 locator squares – the world is divided into squares by the International Amateur Radio Union to identify where in the world you are to other amateurs, generally it only really gets used at VHF and UHF and people will ‘collect squares’!! (Well, we have to have something to do!!!) North east (home) corner of Jersey is IN89xf with “India November” being the zone, “89” being the locator square and “x-ray foxtrot” the alphabetical grid identifier within the square to tie the location down to a specific area. As is the way of things a good many competitors will go romping away whether its due to location, equipment or shear manpower so as a single operator there is a theoretical disadvantage. That said last years winner was a single operator but he was using an array of four beam antennas which probably helped!! So it was that I got underway at 10am local time (09.00 UTC) and started slowly but reasonably surely to build up a healthy looking log. By the 5pm (16.00 UTC) deadline I had 28 contacts across 11 squares so beat my personal target and was also pleased to have worked further and more consistently on low power VHF than I have at any time in the past!! Furthest contact of the day was into IO 93 uk (South Humberside) but I was on occasion hearing Scotland, Southern Ireland, Belgium and even one each from Spain and from Portugal but unfortunately couldn’t get through to any of them. The band seemed to quieten down in the middle part of the day with things being VERY quiet for a long period, as it turned out it wasn’t just because it was lunchtime but the band did drop out (as confirmed subsequently by Patrick who packed up at that time). Fortunately it opened up enough to get a few more contacts in the afternoon but it was getting hard work by then. So all in all good fun, I enjoy 2m SSB anyway but this was an eye opener at just how far it is possible to get and with minimal power. There were lessons to be learnt though: - The siting of the antenna was good but I needed to be sat with it to turn it OR have a rotator which would mean the added problem of powering it. I just know I lost contacts because I couldn’t get to turn the beam onto an incoming signal fast enough or accurately enough before they would turn their own beam away from me.
- During the quiet bits I needed to be calling CQ more then moving the beam a few degrees then calling and so forth and through 360 degrees.
- Having a separate receiver and a helper to monitor other frequencies whilst still calling could help matters and spread the load a bit.
- This all generated some interest for what was going on and could be a good advert for the club so there’s something else to think about.
Quite looking forward to the next one now though!! 73 de RobL 2J0RZD
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