LOTA 2019

Shine Your Light On Me!

This weekend I setup my SotaBeams 20/40 dipole outside in the back garden and connected up my Yaesu FT-818ND with a 13.2V LifePO battery. It was Lighthouses On The Air weekend and I thought it might be interesting to see if I could make contact with any from my less than perfect QTH at the bottom of Winter Hill.

I oriented the dipole so that it was radiating WNW to ESE and it seemed to work okay but there was lots of QRM and QSB on the 40M band. In all fairness though, when it was up, it was up! 

I used just 5W throughout except for one station in Iceland where I (inadvertently) dropped to 2.5W. Most work was done on 40 Metres but I also tried 20.

I often found that I had to wait quite a while for a clear break to get in-between other stations who were clearly pumping out lots of power, but with perseverance I managed to make good contacts and received excellent audio reports in the main.

At one point I heard a local friend G0FRL calling GB1DLH (Dungeness in Kent) and they were really struggling to hear him so I thought I wouldn't stand a chance considering he has a HUGE hex-beam and I've got this little portable dipole. Much to my surprise, they heard my QRP call and asked other stations to clear for me. They were running 300W and showing S8 on my meter. The operator Marie-Claire was impressed with my 5W and gave me a 59 report.

I was particularly impressed that I reached TF1IRA in Iceland using just 2.5W with the reports back to me quoted as "genuine 59" according to the operator. 400 miles per Watt.  I was also happy to reach UA4S in Volzhsk, Russia (2000 miles) with 5W. Excellent!

 

 

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