146 and 437MHz contest Aug 8th and 9th

[M0DTS]

I did manage to get one frame from you Arthur, even though it was a healthy signal the interference won for the most part.
Sorry to hear about your antennas, i did that exact same thing many years ago, NEVER again!

There was definitely some tropo about as .750 was very busy all day.
Malcolm UHY, i heard you very well up to S7 for some time while you were working Dave.
There were were lots of other stations quite weak/readable but i couldn't raise any of them, nice to hear lots of activity, great!

Looking forward to the next one.

Rob

[G8GKQ]

A really good day out. Thanks to all who participated!

I went portable about 20 miles West of Salisbury and managed to work Malcolm G0UHY at at 119 km, David M0YDH/P at 154 km and Dave G4FRE/P at 118 km, all on 70 cm. Closer in I also worked Mike G8LES at 87 km having seen his pictures before even hearing him on talkback. Some work to do on the 5.6 GHz kit which I took along to test but seems to be very insensitive on receive.

Please don't forget to submit your entries to contests@batc.tv.

Dave, G8GKQ

[radiogareth]

Close, but no cigar......not helped by leaving my Minitiouner behind - I did have Plutos to use with DVBS_Gui but neither laptops could cope with details for 146.5 and obliged by crashing after 30 seconds. SDR RSP1 was present too, but not with its required USB-B lead. One day I'll take everything I need.....
1kW ERP on 5.6GHz FM didn't make it to Dave but it all seemed to be working. My new full-wave dipole for talk-back on 2m worked well, being heard on the Yorkshire moors and down in Taunton (suspect some tropo help).
Did work G8LES one way for a first and only contact.
Some observations as a relative newcomer....144.750 is too busy for effective calling - do we need to agree a QSY off once a new station is found?
When posting activity, could people include the name/location enough for Google to find it rather than just the locator. At the moment I'm looking at the distance and direction using Google maps. Maybe there's a better way (I think some contest software shows distance and bearings based on locators entered, maybe there's a better way - please share!)
SIte was nice and private (by paid for arrangement) and offers good takeoff to the north, via West round to South. For the future I may be able to move a bit to clear the trees where it is at least clear (but flat) round to the south.
Gareth

146_small_2.jpg (94.47 KiB) Viewed 2968 times

146_small_1.jpg (89.01 KiB) Viewed 2968 times

[M0SKM]

Gareth,

If you have an Android phone use LocatorDroid for bearing and distance, it knows where you are from GPS ref.

Steve

[radiogareth]

Excellent, Thanks Steve