On Thursday April 9th, Rex, John and Andrew went to view the field that the TSGARC will be using for its three-day extravaganza.  It was such a warm, sunny day that we could not resist the temptation too do some portable work in addition to just looking at the field 🙂

We arrived about 1530hrs and were quickly on the air and making contacts across the UK despite the skip being a little longer than anticipated at that time of day.  Andrew brought along a 10m mast which we used to support a full-sized 40m dipole in an inverted ‘V’ configuration an IC-7200 HF radio plus the all important generator.  After spending some time on 40m we raised a 20m dipole from the same mast and then worked 20m for a while.

The image to the right shows the 10m mast and 40m dipole situated toward the S.W. end of the field.

Later in the afternoon we had some unexpected visitors: Rob, Andy and Dave somehow found us!  Was our signal that strong!  We stayed till dusk then packed everything away and went back to Rex’s house for tea and hot-crossed buns.  Nice 🙂

Everyone was impressed by the size, location and RF quietness of the field despite some large overhead power-lines in the adjacent field. It will make the perfect spot for our three-day portable event.

To the left, Andrew, Rex and Rob man the temporary station setup on a plastic patio table…  The black box to left of the picture is the Palstar manual ATU.

Andrew
G0RVM