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Have taken one further step up the amateur radio licensing ladder, passing the Intermediate exam and assessments. A big thank you to Grantham ARC and Alan and Keith for invigilating and congratulations to my fellow candidate Mark Orbell who also passed.

My new callsign is 2E0NRD

Current QTH

I am currently writing this blog entry while on holiday sitting in the caravan watching the sun rise over the Lake District. I have brought the rig along with a M0CVO magitenna for HF and not wanting to miss out on the 144MHz UKAC tonight have a Sandpiper 3-Element Delta Quad.

It has already caused some strange looks on the campsite while I built it up and tested it last night and I hope I won't have any RFI issues as caravans are often fitted with wideband TV amplifiers! Thankfully the site is currently very quiet as the school holidays have finished.

Testing the Delta Quad last night

Initially was going to make a Moxon for 2m but I messed up my first attempt and ran out of time to make another so at the last minute ordered the Delta Quad from Sandpiper. It is a well built antenna I just had to cut the three loops and solder them up, the instructions were very clear. It is easily dismantled and seems ideal for portable work so is an investment for the future.  I hope to use it during July's VHF NFD.

The antenna has an excellent VSWR match and when testing I clearly heard a cw/jt65 beacon around 144.480MHz which must have been GB3NGI on the Slieve Anorra Mountain in County Antrim, Northern Ireland (IO65VB)

I will be operating as M6GTG/P tonight as don't want to upset my UKAC scores and I am not really sure what to expect as surrounded by mountains in most directions here but should be fun. I might even rope in Boris to give me a hand

Boris not looking too impressed

Last Tuesday (27 May) was the 50MHz UKAC. I had intended to do some operating over previous Bank Holiday weekend and with reports of Sporadic E propagation picking up on 6m I had put my homebrew Moxon back up on the pole with the new rotator. Unfortunately the operating was curtailed due to the discomfort I am currently suffering due to a trapped nerve in my back.

That weekend saw some horrendous weather and it rained heavily for several days, indeed it had rained most of Tuesday, checking the VSWR in the evening before the start of the contest I was shocked to see it had risen from 1:1.5 to nearly 1:3!

I knew the bad weather was forecast before putting the antenna up so had made sure all the coax connectors and the feedpoint were properly sealed with self amalgamating tape so was somewhat perplexed. In the end I decided what I thought the issue was, the moxon frame was untreated softwood and in the bad weather had become very wet and damp and suspect it was affecting the resonance.

Despite this I decided to carry on as I was only running 10W and had a productive few hours despite some local noise.

I

27 May 2014 - M6GTG 50MHz UKAC QSO Map

Anyway time to put the kettle on and I will post an update about how I get on tonight.
Andrew Garratt, MØNRD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from East Midlands, England. Contact him at [email protected].

Way back in my Novice days during the late 1980’s I used to have a ton of fun working 10 meters SSB during the summer evenings with sporadic E band openings.

With a new TECH in the family, I thought this would be a good way to get him excited about HF and upgrading to General.

I have not even listened to 10 meters in the evenings.

Have there been any of these openings this summer?  I will start looking and let you know when I find them!

Burke Jones, NØHYD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Kansas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

even when it seems like there’s nothing out there.  You never know what might come up!

It’s a beautiful sunny day here in Central NJ, so as per my custom, I headed out to the Jeep, the KX3 and the Buddistick at lunchtime.  From the get go, it seemed very disappointing.  There wasn’t a whole heckuva a lot of DX activity. What I was hearing were stations I have worked before and you don’t want to keep pestering guys on the same bands, just to get a contact in the log.

I started calling CQ at the 20, 17 and 15 Meter QRP watering holes with no takers.  I was slightly discouraged (Momma said there’d be days like this), and was ready to pack it in and head on back to my desk, slightly early.  That’s when I decided to give 17 Meters just one extra twiddle before coming in.

Bam!  There was TM70UTAH loud as all get out!  This is a Special Event station, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Allied landing at Utah Beach on D-Day in 1944.  First call and they were in the books!  I have to admit, I was so excited when I heard them that I had to send my call a few extra times as I fumbled it in my eagerness to work them.  I did hear a confirmation of W2LJ come back to me and I was smiling ear to ear. Next,  just a few KHz down, I heard SP3DOF calling “CQ DX”.  One call and I was in Jerzy’s logbook.

Wow! A WWII Special Event station and a Polish DX station worked within a few minutes of each other – a red letter day as far as I’m concerned.  And all this was after I was tempted to throw in the towel for the day. So it’s a good reminder (to myself included) to keep throwing that fishing line back into the water.  You never know what’s going to land on the hook.

The funny thing is, that TM70UTAH wasn’t even mentioned in that ARRL article on D-Day Special Event stations that I posted from the ARRL just a few days ago.  So in addition to TM70JUN, keep an ear open for TM70UTAH. I would like to work both of them!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Larry Makoski, W2LJ, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Do I need to say more?

Paul Stam, PC4T, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from the Netherlands. Contact him at [email protected].

Dan Trudgian, MØTGN, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Wiltshire, England. He's a radio nut, IT guru, general good guy and an all round good egg. Contact him him here.

Between 10 and 12 o'clock UTC there was a great opening on 6 meter. I worked TA1BM with JT65 on 50.276 MHz. 2233 km. It was my 28th DXCC on 6 meter. Also worked LZ2FP.

Paul Stam, PC4T, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from the Netherlands. Contact him at [email protected].

This afternoon Tim W3ATB and I went canoeing on the Pemi. It was a perfectly stunning day. I worked Brazil, Italy and France from a small island in the river.

We started out at Profile Falls, a little south of Bristol in my aluminum Grumman canoe. We had a little less than eight miles to go to reach our take-out at Shaw Cove in Sanbornton.

The sounds of red wing black birds clucking from the marshy shore filled the air as we rounded the bend near Hill Village. A pair of ducks took off as we approached and flew south several inches above the water. The old bridge abutment came into view soon after.

The bridge led from Sanbornton to Hill before it was torn down in the 1940s to make way for a flood control area. We started looking for a suitable place to operate. We needed trees, and a breezy place where the mosquitoes couldn’t feed on us. We found it on an island around the next turn in the river.

We pulled the canoe up to the shore and tied it to a log. After jumping out, I tossed a line over an arching maple branch and pulled up a half wave wire for 20 meters.

I sat down on a log, which no doubt landed on the island during spring flooding, and set up the KX3. We had left an hour late and were a bit rushed. At first the band seemed dead, but I found a few strong stations. The first one I called was PV8ADI in Brazil. There was a pileup, and I was surprised when he answered me. We exchanged 599s and I tuned around some more. Here’s my log:

1 Jun-14 2208 14.026 PV8ADI CW 599 599 Brazil
1 Jun-14 2215 14.017 F6FZG CW 579 599 France
1 Jun-14 2222 14.012 IZ4BEZ CW 599 599 Italy
1 Jun-14 2223 14.001 I8GMG CW 559 579 Italy

We clambered back into the canoe and headed downstream for the final leg. The saturated colors of the early evening were dazzling. We started looking for Shaw Cove. It’s just around the next bend, I would say… but it wasn’t.

We found it finally… honestly we were relieved and a bit sad at the same time. We were both long overdue at home… but it was an adventure that will stay with us for a lifetime.

Jim Cluett, W1PID, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Hampshire, USA. Contact him at [email protected].