International Marconi Day ( I M D ) is on the 26th April, a celebration of Guglielmo Marconi’s Birthday.
As usual the station will be hosting the event to represent Marconi’s Brean Down site. On the 18th May 1897 the furthest wireless communication at the time from Lavernock point in South Wales to Brean Down Somerset was accomplished at a distance of 14 Kms.
Marconi spent a fair amount of time in this area and his influence has led to street’s to be named after him in Portishead, Clevedon, and Weston- Super -Mare. There’s even a plaque on the wall of the Italian Garden’s in the center of Weston dedicated to Marconi and his achievement’s.
As we are a contest group we run this event in the only way we know, that is to work as many stations that we can in the 24 hrs of the event.
I’m pretty sure that we make more qso’s than any other IMD station so I guess between 2.5 - 3k would be in order depending on propagation. So if you call in and expect a long chat please don’t be offended if we log you and quickly move on to the next op.
We will be operating CW, SSB and RTTY but as we at G6PZ love CW more than any other mode it will be a good bet to find us there in preference. After all Marconi did’nt have SSB ! Ok that was a bit tongue in cheek but we will be mixing it up a bit between the modes.
We like I M D so when you hear GB6MD please give us a call. For further details please see the IMD website.
This was very nearly a single-op event for G4MJS but at the last minute M0CLW joined the team and M5RIC announced his availability, so we decided to go for a usual multi-single effort.
The station was very much in a similar state to Russian DX in terms of antennas; the MonstIR’s rotator was fubar after the storms prior to Russian DX and so needed to be fixed again. We decided that having most of the forward gain in the direction of North America would be beneficial as we usually get decent NA runs and, of course, are 6-points per QSO on LF in WPX. The thinking also was that the MonstIR has 180deg beam reversal mode to put most of the gain in the reverse direction and also a bi-directional mode being able to TX/RX better on the back of the beam.
First night
By the time darkness fell on the Friday evening prior to the contest start, we hadn’t established why we had a high SWR on the 80m antenna (there are two but we only had one usable cut for SSB) and it was too dark to do anything about it; in addition, we hadn’t sorted the 160m antenna so the only band we were able to make an impression on is 40m. The decision was made that the run would start on 40m and the mult would start on 80m, albeit with poor SWR and thus very little forward power. Sadly, 40m conditions were not lively on the first night and so the runs were very slow and we spent a lot of time (way more than usual) in S&P.
The only notable 40m conditions was Saturday morning, some two hours after sunrise, where there was a good long path VK/ZL opening. Surprisingly, in spite of them running (mostly) west coast US, the pileup was easy to break and we logged some 4 or 5 prefixes in the process.
First day
Conditions on 20m first day were nothing special though one of the best hourly rates for the contest was achieved early morning when a large UA opening occured. There was an NA run but it wasn’t spectacular and neither were the rates. There were spots on the DX Cluster for 10m where those in eastern EU seemed to be having some success, but nothing here.
During daytime Saturday, G6PZ spent some time investigating the LF antenna setup and it was discovered (!) that we had in fact been using the 160m antenna on 80m and the 80m on 160m, hence the issues. Things were soon sorted and the second 80m antenna was also cut for SSB. The SWR was 1:1 around 3.720, so we decided to leave things and see how it went.
Second night
Second (Saturday) night was far more productive with a fully functional 80m antenna; finally, pileups were easy to break (remember getting a “nice signal” comment from PJ2T which is good considering there relatively difficult path to EU and the fact they were “running” NA) and we had a good Q-hour running North Americans. However, 40m was very different: Virtually nothing to comment on with very little NA worked and very unproductive runs — 80m was definitely better. A memorable moment on 80m was being called by 5T5DC for a new one and being given serial #002.
Again, early morning, some time after sunrise, there was a repeat VK/ZL long path opening on 40m and another ZM was logged for a new mult. Sadly, VK7GN was also very loud and a new one but was transmitting on 7203 with no split.. C’mon, remember us! A very easy, but missed, mult.
Second day
Second day conditions were more favourable with 20m opening to near Asia and middle-east very early and we encountered our first far-east stations logging quite a few new prefixes. However, some very “one way propagation” whereby, even with the SteppIR stack, some of the far-east stations really struggled to hear us, in spite of CQing.
15m also produced some conditions which was a reprive from 20m so much welcomed. Again, 10m spots from those in eastern Europe but nothing hear here in G; still zero QSOs logged on that band. Unfortunately, that’s the way it would stay with not even any South Americans worked. We did witness a couple of spots from Gs but even those spotted stations were not heard.
My first blog so I guess as station engineer a low down on the recent shack re-fit is appropriate.
The original shack was starting to get tired and as more and more equipment found its way to the operating positions it was getting a little cramped.
I’ve been thinking about a re-fit for a while now but with work, DIY in the house and a whole bag of other stuff it took a place on the back burner for a while.
The Icom sponsored 7700’s got me into thinking about a complete re-vamp to complement the new set up. I spoke to Jo my XYL about what to do and she said that a new floor and glass desks would give a modern contemporary look.
Jo said that if I wanted her help it was now or never, well this was Easter bank holiday and rip out time ! First the rigs, computer’s, controller’s and wiring. Then the desk’s, chairs etc came out and it all looked like a war zone. It takes ages to put it together but no time at all to wreck it !
A quick trip to the local DIY store and armed with laminate flooring and wire netting the re-build was about to get under way.
First the floor, team effort here, Jo doing the laying PZ on the chop saw. As shown in the pic’s the floor went down nicely but having to move heavy Acom amp’s and a storage heater around is’nt easy ! Eventually all done and looking good.
Next job was the wire netting, this was stapled onto the walls and ceiling to form a wire shield to reduce RF in the shack mainly from the lower aerial in the stack . This was quite tricky as it came on roll’s like wall paper and had a mind of it’s own !
It’s starting to look good, now for the desks, some nice glass units were sourced that would give the contemporary look that Jo was looking for and the extra space that Iwas looking for. Unfortunately they were flat packed but we managed to work it out pretty quickly and without any problem’s they were sorted and put in position ready for the kit.
The radio’s and controls at both operating positions were installed along with all the other cables and stuff to make a contest station fly. I think it looks pretty cool with a more open feel to the shack and much more space.
So there it is, this is how we spent Easter in Eastertown. ( Eastertown is the address of G6PZ )
We had very stormy weather in the week leading up to RDXC and unfortunately G6PZ suffered damages as a result. The ProSisTel rotator for the 4el MonstIR died a death and resulted in the MonstIR being able to spin around freely in the wind, also resulting in the coax and control cables being in need of replacement.
The team arrived soon after 9am on Saturday morning (after leaving at 6am) to begin work on antennas; the 4el MonstIR was fixed E/W and we made some changes to the lowband antennas. The contest was started with the tower supporting the 4/4 SteppIR stack lowered which proved quite tricky keeping a run frequency.
The CW/SSB QSO ratio is interesting but not surprising — we didn’t have any decent runs on SSB whereas CW was a totaly different ball game. The end result is that we spent too much time on CW, with over 1000 more QSOs.
The G6PZ Contest Group will be on-air this coming weekend in the Russian DX Contest. The contest starts 1200Z on Saturday and finishes 1200Z Sunday and we will be competing in the multi-op single transmitter category.
ARRL RTTY Roundup
Call: G6PZ
Operator(s): M0SDX
Station: G6PZ
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Eastertown
Summary:
Band QSOs
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80: 309
40: 504
20: 592
15: 80
10:
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Total: 1485
State/Prov = 52
Countries = 73
Total Score = 185,625
I did this one a few years ago with Serge and got 3rd World M/S, whilst he was back in the UK for a short time he called me up and suggested another shot at “Roundup” As Serge is the expert we decided that he did single op and I would try and keep the station “on air” especially as it was going to be a rough night.
Everything worked without any drama other than the WX, very high winds were causing some trouser related issues as the 3 Strumech’s swayed quite alarmingly in the gale coming up off the Bristol Channel.. However the aerials did survive but the 80m phased verticals were more horizontal than not causing a good workout of the swr meter. Not much VE activity heard but some good Westcoast openings on 20 and 40 throughout the weekend.
The new 4 ele MonstIR performed very well on 40, with huge runs into NA that were a blast. 80m was nice finishing with a mini NA run right at the end of the contest. The “off period” negated the big openings to the Far East but some JA’s and VK’s etc. did find their way into the log.
Overall very enjoyable watching someone else do all the hard work, I think that we must do some more RTTY! CU in the next one (maybe).
A very easy, but missed, mult.
