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- Written by: Chris G4ZCS
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First, an important note. My computer has been seriously hacked, with many programs inoperable.
However some still work using a different e-mail address to try some recovery.
If you try the “Tiscali” address you might pick up a virus or worse, so please don't use it till its fixed.
So radio,a quiet month as expected with only two new ones for the year. The annual island activation season has been quite good with 9 different ones worked. The late summer openings around the evening grey line have given me loads of new grid squares in south America. I think the tastiest contact was with CX8FB in Fray Bentos, where the pies come from!
The paths to the USA are coming back, with 20 counties in 13 states this month, and, a few new rare grid squares.
Now I'm looking forward to the equinox propagation and hopefully a few new DX's to achieve 200 for the year.
Cheers & 73
Chris, G4ZCS
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- Written by: Maintenance Guy
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What other kind of holiday fun is there?
A few snaps I thought I'd share with you. No moaning at the back please.
My marriage took a beating, as apparently spending an hour 'playing radio' is an eternity, when what you really want to do is go exploring on the beach. Still, it's all about compromise, I keep reminding her.
I managed a few activations whilst away, but failed to activate Happisburgh Cliffs (below), as the actual SSSI was closed-off due to a huge cliff collapse.
GB-0604 Happisburgh Cliffs (above).
GB-1267 Peddars Way is part of the North Norfolk Coast National Trail. This spot is near West Runton. It was very hot, with no shade. Just get the job done and retire to the beach cafe...
The beautiful GB-0256 Blakeney Point. Excellent Cod & Chips at the Kings Arms. Uncomfortable activation though, as a couple of 'old people' decided that they needed the adjacent bench more than I did. Numb-bum syndrome for a few hours afterwards, but I don't care - Blakeney Point is a 3-fer with GB-1267 Peddars Way AND it's within GB-0155 Norfolk Coast National Landscape. Nice.
For some of these 2-fers and 3-fers, you really have to plan your exact spot. You must be completely within the boundary of each entity you're activating - and so does all of your equipment. There is 30m of leeway when it comes to paths and trails, as we wouldn't want to inconvenience the general public by camping out in the middle of a footpath. Hunters love a multiple as much as activators, especially if they're also in a park.
Activating GB-0263 Norfolk Broads wasn't as easy as it sounds, with access to suitable locations near the water relatively few and far between. I even had to pay for car parking, and I don't do that very often!
Meanwhile, back in Sussex...
GB-4591 Farlington Marshes was a mixed bag. Great views, but with the busy main road located just behind the car park. I could have taken a walk, but I was on a time limit. On the upside, it also counts as a '2-fer' (a free double-activation) as it's also within GB-0022 Langstone Harbour Conservation Reserve. Yay!
If you activate here, look out for Stuart M0TTQ. He's regularly operating using a 12m Spiderpole a little way around the bay and has over 300 activations at this park.
Above is GB-0308 Chichester Harbour. I actually thought this was Langstone Harbour when I activated this spot, so I had to go back the next day to activate the real Langstone Harbour! Hardly a heartbreak though.
And finally, Bosham Quay at GB-0308. Stunning place, and I can wholly recommend a trip to the various towns and villages around Chichester Harbour in general, with the highlight probably being Emsworth. You just have to deal with the terrible A27 to get there from Mid Sussex :(
At Bosham, you can actually park for free (nothing more rewarding) on the foreshore. No radials required with all that salt water as a ground-plane.
Quick setup and takedown, but beware...
30 minutes after this photo was taken, my parking space looked very different!
Right, that's enough of my boring holiday photos. Enjoy your radio, whichever discipline you choose to take up.
73
Berni M0XYF
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Apologies, but as part of the migration of the website from Google Invisible reCAPTCHA to Cloudflare Turnstile, I broke it.
It's late and I need some sleep, so I'll come back to it when I get a moment. If you don't know what I'm on about, then don't worry. Just know that the contact forms for both 'General Enquiries' and 'Website Registration' are currently producing an ugly error.
Sorry about that, but it will be fixed soon!
Update
I gave up on Cloudflare. Way too complicated and time-consuming for such a small website as ours, so I did the sensible thing and farmed the task out to Jotform. I'll let them handle the CAPTCHA for us!
Should be fixed now, but I'll test it properly later this week. Still a little bit of tidying up to do too, with some broken redirects.
Berni M0XYF
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- Written by: Chris G4ZCS
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First, many thanks to Berni for making these notes possible. Last month’s illustrations that he found helped a great deal.
The first few days of July were quiet with my first DX with Philippines on the 3rd, then mostly locals till the 8th when Brazil, Asiatic Russia and Borneo went into the log. Close by Borneo I worked Hayling Island! Then San Salvador for a new one this year, the icing on the cake was C94RRC on Inhacamba Island off the Mozambique coast for a rare IOTA, AF-103.
On the evening of the 17th the same group were activating a second Mozambique island, AF-098. Their generator had gone AWOL the day before, so the team had a day on the beach. After much hunting around the bands, I heard a signal on 30M that was a steady strength, I set the computer to call in 'Fox & Hounds' mode and sat in front of the screen while the 'management' was watching England playing Sweden. After an hour I needed a short break for comfort and a beer. When I returned, the screen was showing my call with 'RR73'. Whooppee! Another new one in the log.
The weekend of the 26th and 27th was the annual IOTA contest that I like to have a go at, however this year I had to give it a miss. As a consolation prize, I was able to work the last two Brazilian subdivisions for the 'Worked All Brazil'. This is not too easy as some of the areas include the Amazon rain forest, and some very low inhabited coastal strips. So now to try for all the Argentine areas as my next challenge.
This month’s illustration (below) is from 9M1Z, not the card but the envelope! The stamp must have cost more than the $3 postage, however I doubt this is made of real gold.
So to sum up, another quiet month for DX but the Russian Polar ship is always worth a call.
Cheers & good DX, Chris
G4ZCS
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In my experience, June can some years be a bit dead for DX with only some local contacts, usually on the lower bands. This year seems to follow that trend. On 60m the first few contacts were; G0WSJ, on EU-005. EI8KN on EU-115. OJ0L on EU-053 and 7 other European mainland contacts.
Following on from my May edition, the postman had another surprise for me. I mentioned I had worked 9M6NA in East Malaysia on the 25th of May, well on the morning of the 9th of June the card arrived having been posted in Japan on the 4th. In the 'good old days' it took a year or more!
Illustrated is an example of the new electronic QSLs, however at the present time they are not accepted for the major awards schemes. But, they are still good to show friends and family who you have been contacting. In this case, Namibia in southern Africa.
On the 8th I managed to work Madagascar, a new one for the year, but try as I may, I couldn’t get a confirmed FT8 contact with T88TJ on Palau island.
It took until the 27th before I worked another new one for the year. Out of a dead band, a rising signal from JX appeared. Jan Mayen island is well north of Iceland and not heard too often in the UK. The only population is a team of Norwegians who run and maintain a metrological station and the airfield. This is good for IOTA as EU-022, and grid square IQ50.
Image credit: Gernot Hecker, 21.08.2005, licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (image scaled).
With not much to work on the bands, I have been looking back through the logbook. It is noticeable that The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which used to be quite rare has been a hot bed of new calls who seem to want to work everyone. Ukraine, likewise, is still very active in spite of their troubles. Islands appear regularly and this month I worked 6 EU, 3 AF, 2 AS and 3 NA.
Hopefully July will produce a better score and some real DX, as it is coming up to the DXpedition season.
Cheers
Chris G4ZCS
