A GRAND DAY OUT

 

So the plan was to go and check out a field that we have been given the use of by an amateur friend.  Five hours later, we decided to pack up :)

Brian, G0RDH and myself arrived at the field and moved the cars into the shade under the trees.  we also planned it so that the tailgates would protect us from full sun as it moved around and on the whole, this worked well enough.  The field is mown and firm, so taking the cars on was not an issue.

The one thing I wanted to do was to attempt to put up the BandHopper 3 that I purchased from SotaBeams recently.  I wanted to see if I could put it up on my own and I did.  Next time I will have a much better idea and of course, I won't be filming at the same time, which will speed things up.  Even then, it took very little time.

Well, having put up the aerial, it would have been a shame not to try it right?  I was hoping to get a couple of contacts to see how it went.  40m has been a fickle band of late and so I was not expecting to have too much luck.

I could not have been more wrong!  I had a few contacts with my own callsign and then switched to GX5BAY, which is the club call of Bay Amateur Radio Group.

Just for context, Bay Amateur Radio Group (BARG) is a loose group of friends who like to play portable radio.  We believe the hobby should be fun and that getting out in the field is a lot less stressful than trying to work through S7 of noise at home :)

We did put up the JPC-12 and the SlideWinder as well but 40m was so busy, I never got to try them out!

Brian set up with the SlideWinder but he had some issues with his station that we need to iron out for the next outing.  I set up my KX3 for him on the little 6800mAH LiPo battery that I use with it.  He went on 20m but the band was busy with activity of some kind and he didn't really make much headway.  Again, another learning experience.

So, I set off on 40m calling with GX5BAY and in just a few minutes I had pileups.  I fell back on the old way of making a list and then running through before calling CQ again.  This worked as well as ever and I can't count the number of QRP and portable stations I worked!  Having a zero noise floor helped and everyone was booming in.  The RGO ONE excels in this kind of environment.  I do love single conversion superhets!

I will admit freely that I was taken completely by surprise at the sheer amount of people calling me.  I was running 50W into a portable dipole at about 19 feet!  I got great signal reports and so many completely unsolicited 'great audio' reports that I lost count.

I eventually got the chance to switch to CW and managed to work ON6PJ but then the band started to shift and possibly some kind of contest started.  Whatever, it got chaotic quickly and as we had been out for some time, we decided to pack up for the day.

Next time we will be more organised and hopefully Brian's station will work as advertised!  The weather was lovely and in the shade, it was a perfect temperature.  We had plenty of water and next time I will take some tea I think.

We did some filming and you will find the video below.  I hope you enjoy it.

73 Ian