Lovely Sunday morning; just a tad cold.
Went out early to load my new mobile shack and the doors were frozen shut; good excuse for another coffee.
My van is recently acquired so no fixed desk at the moment; should be properly sorted for activity weekends 2018.
There are a couple of handy parking spots in the top car park (Visitor Centre), the surface is large stones covering a metal grid so the end bays are best; the only places you can use one of the screw in pole mounts. On this occasion I used a drive on mount for a telescopic mast and 13cm horn.
I had made some plans to do a couple of tests on 13cms and 5GHz with Arthur G4CPE. Arthur is fairly local to the downs but we wanted to see if a path existed on 5GHz; there's a solid line of trees to the NE of the visitor centre. 13cms was easy using 2 watts and a horn antenna; sadly we drew a blank with 5GHz.
Phil G8XTW is working on a 5GHz project and had in place a transmitter only; I swung the Wi-Fi grid around and there was his P5 picture; you'll note in the pictures below I was beaming straight through a hedge. Keen to see if he could receive my signal Phil climbed a ladder to a flat section of his roof with a handheld receiver; his efforts rewarded with a P3 picture using just a Wi-Fi dipole.
On completion of the local tests I had a listen for a while on 144.750 but all was quiet; possibly due to just using a handheld radio into a mobile whip. At this point my legs were losing contact with my feet due to cold; it was an easy decision to clear away and head home.
Next time out I'll endeavour to be a bit more organised.
