Meeting up with Dave, G4BUO
It was great to meet with Dave, G4BUO last night. Though we have pretty regular QSOs in various contests, it was ages since we had met up for a beer and a chat, and very enjoyable it was.
Dave had been part of the UK team, with Andy, G4PIQ who’d achieved a brilliant 9th place in the recent World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC) held in Moscow. It was interesting to hear how they’d achieved such a high QSO total in the contest, by using two radios on one aerial, with some fancy switchgear, allowing them to ‘interleave’ QSOs, ie one person transmitting whilst the other one was listening. Clever stuff.
As always, propagation varies from the different part of the world and the Great Circle paths took a bit of getting used to; UK is west, France and Germany is southwest and so on.
Temperature at their field day site was extremely hot, rising to around 38C at time, but the winds got high as well, with the tent almost blowing overnight; it being held down by the support team and referee whilst Dave and Andy kept on operating.