Some more tropo last night, so I spent time on 432 again looking for new stuff, but there wasn’t much around that I hadn’t worked before. I did manage a few OZs and DLs, but didn’t want to make too much noise with my little boy in bed.  I had been hanging out on the ON4KST message system earlier in the day and during a chat with Martin GM6VXB he kindly agreed that we could try a sked if conditions looked promising.

Around 9.30pm I stuck the antenna to the north and found the GB3ANG beacon at 559 – the first time I have heard it on 432.  Back on KST Martin was good to his word and we had a quick QSO on 70cm followed by a more difficult one on 2m.

A GM shouldn’t be a big deal, but Martin is in IO97aq and as the picture below shows, there isn’t much land in IO97 for a station to sit in! 

So, Martin, thanks a lot for looking for me – IO97 was new on two bands. More to come in the 432 UKAC contest tonight?

The weather here has been fine and dry over the weekend suggesting that we were under a high pressure weather system. High pressure can mean tropo openings on the VHF bands and a quick look at the Hepburn forecast on Friday suggested that there could be some fun ahead.

I realised that the radio station was untested since I changed from PLT to a wifi bridge between the operating position and radio shack, so I spent an hour on Saturday making sure everything worked and also reinstalled the amplifiers following VHF NFD (which was only 3 months ago!). Luckily for me most of the system worked first time and I only had to spend a few minutes with the soldering iron.

I didn’t hear much activity on Saturday, but on Sunday morning 144MHz started to open between Northern G/GM and Northern Europe (SM/SP/DL) and by dusk I too had propagation. There wasn’t much new for me on 2m, so I concentrated on 432MHz, working 8 stations in SM, OZ, DL and SP. 

ODX was SP1NQN at 1186Km, with four other contacts over 1000Km. I did briefly hear LY2WR at 1664Km, but he wasn’t strong enough with me for a QSO. It looks like there is a day or two of high pressure left so let’s hope for some more!