The Clifton ARS met up to do NFD from Detling in Kent over the first weekend in June. As usual, things were rather chaotic. Only G3JKY and I are capable contest of contest CW, and JKY doesn’t do computers which means there is much hassle around logging.

That said, the club decided to enter the open section this year. Not because we could make the 1500 Qs needed to win, but because over the years the club has won every single band in the contest except 10m and 160m so we decided to try and win one of those bands to add to the record. To do this, JKY provided a dipole for 10m, along with a vertical whilst G4RFC produced a dipole for top band. The vertical also ran on 15 and 20m, whilst the top band dipole would run on 40 and 80 if the other bands were dead. The photo shows Jakey in action with his Ten Tec radio

  As it turns out we didn’t need to worry too much as 10m was open for most of the weekend daylight hours. We made quite a few Qs, but I suspect that this will not be enough to slay the ghost as other open section entrants will have been using beams on 10m. Top band was plagued by high static – a huge thunderstorm passed within 25 miles, giving a great light show over the Thames, but JKY didn’t have to slow the rate down at all and we made 130 Qs. This is 40 less than last year, but I suspect that the wx meant that others were spending less time on the band.

The raw scores are:
      Band    QSOs    Pts
         1.8     135     950
           7       8      32
          14     101     317
          21      23      65
          28     127     722
       Total     394    2086

So let's see how we do. Hopefully it won't be rock bottom of the heap!

I have blogged several times about my involvment with the Scout radio station at Gilwell Park, GB2GP. The shack was lost 2 years ago and the HF yagi took a beating over the winter

I happened to go over there this wekeend as a group of radio scouts were using GB2GP from a tent with a dipole in the trees. I had a long discussion with a couple of the leading lights at Gilwell and it looks like a rebuild of the radio station is on the cards. I have offered my services and look forwards to getting stuck in and producing a decent station for all of the Scouts that visit the site.

I have been given a Kathrein amplifier that has just come out of commercial service on 71MHz. It is in a 19 inch rack mount panel, runs on 28V, contains a pair of isolators (with DLs) and is rated at 100W according to the panels. I haven't started to take it apart yet, but wonder if anyone has any info that can help me get started.

I have posted a few pics below if that helps....

          CQWPXCW Score Summary Sheet
Start Date : 2010-05-29
CallSign Used : M0BPQ
Operator(s) : M0BPQ
Operator Category : SINGLE-OP
Band : 10M
Power : QRP
Mode : CW
Gridsquare : IO91WP
Club/Team : hadley wood contest group
Software : N1MM Logger V10.2.6

        Band    QSOs    Pts  WPX
         3.5       5      9    5
           7       7      18    5
          14      43      53   36
          21      23      29   18
          28      79      99   61

       Total     157     208  125
            Score : 26,000
            Rig : TS480SAT
         Antennas : Inverted L
Soapbox : That was rather fun. Lots of SpE on 10m +15m that made things interesting, but 20m was killed by the AU on Saturday evening. No DX worked (unless you count CE/PY/LU on 10m) but a really interesting trial for my new set up. That CW filter is one of my best buys for a long time!