BATC Forum

Hi All,

I'll be out portable again this Sunday 20th from 9am until around 3pm.
Usual spot IO94LI.
I'll have 2m and 70cm DATV.

73
Rob
M0DTS

I actually got on site Saturday evening but too late to setup much equipment.
Passed four Road Closed signs on my way up the little winding road to the top, no idea what that was about !!!
With just the van 2m whip antenna i heard French stations talking on 144.750 but nobody else, they couldn't hear me.

Conditions were actually not bad to the south.
I managed a 2-way contact into France F5RZC and was seen by others.
No luck with getting to Dwingloo (they saw my signal but not enough to decode) or any other station in Holland, conditions poor that way.
I saw a signal from Marc F3YX in Paris on band viewer about 2dB over the noise but not enough for TV, amazing as that's around 600km!
Worked 4 'local' stations too, so i call that a success.....

A failure though was the Rotator - whirrs but no turn - still to investigate.

I didn't get time to try 2m.

Look forward to the next time when the tropo is great....

Rob


*EDIT - Rotator was just some dry grease on the gear shafts, hasn't been touched for 15 years so i cant complain!!

Interesting report, Rob. Sorry I couldn't get out this w/e - spent time with our youngest granddaughter.
Russ.

So near yet so far.....can but hope for some tropo for the next activity and then the contest
In an attempt to persuade my HiLo mast to pump up I wrapped the bottom section (where the seals are) with a good length of heating tape and covered with a lot of bubble wrap. Nice and warm by Sat morning but it still refused to rise. So my hope that a bit of heat would relax the seals enough to seal didn't work. Next step partial dismantling to see what's up with it.
So no RF this end other than battling (and winning) with the LiberSDR that arrived. It works
Next time....
Gareth