Past Events

Teslathon 2006

For those who managed to make it on the Saturday to the 'Teslathon' organised by Martin Dale of Nottingham, you would have seen the 'Big Twin' coils of his manage to set a new UK record - "unless," as Martin said at the time, "you know different." The event was again staged at the Carlton Road United Reformed Church in Derby, the headquarters of DADARS. After one or two tries earlier in the day he first went for, and beat, the current record of 10 feet by a whopping two inches! Later he raised the bar to 11 foot - well if you're to break a record then break it and don't mess about, so after one or two dry runs he took the plunge and tried for 12 feet. He shoots - he scores! Yes!! Seven - or maybe eight - sparks made trip, thus giving him the new UK record! As far as he's aware, that is. As to how long this achievement remains his is up to someone else who will beat it at some point - but until that happens then - again, as far as it is known - Martin Dale G6ABU from Nottingham holds the UK record. Congrats to him on his achievement and for organising such a great event!

Elvaston Rally 2006 (Not ther DADARS rally)

VAB = 1KW on HF!

I was asked by Chris, G0IYZ, one of the organisers of the Elvaston Castle National Radio Rally, if I would like to operate the GB2ECR station on the Saturday before the rally scheduled for the next day. "What's this? Operating a station that doesn't require me to put masts up and all the other things first? I'll have some of that!" so I accepted his invitation. The reason is that the organisers were to be so busy getting everything set up for the next day that they wouldn't have anyone available to get the GB2ECR callsign on the air. I popped down to the rally site on the Friday evening to pick up my pass for the next morning and saw their Club caravan already sited with a 2m co-linear ready for the talk-in station, and a trap dipole of the W3DZZ type also in place. A mental note to take a mug and a couple of pints of milk - just in case they happen to get the kettle on of course. . . well you've got to go prepared, haven't you?

Saturday dawned and I parked in the designated area near the caravan. "C'mon, let's have a walk round the site" says Ken G3OCA. I tagged on behind, leaving everything in the car ready for putting into the caravan when the keys arrived. Then I saw these two towers - 60' each - and below an immense truck. Stood near it were Chris G0IYZ and Neal M0NMD and another chap who, it transpired, was Joe, the owner of this device. "Up you get" he says. Now my climbing into this truck must've been a sight to behold and I'm not aware that anyone had video to hand to record the debacle for prosperity - fortunately. I sat down in the leather swivel chair that came with the truck from the Russians. Russians? Yes, this truck is ex-Russian MoD and is fully fitted as a communications vehicle. The specification of this 'beast' is something that takes a while to digest, so I suggest you point your internet browser at: www.bellradio.co.uk and have a look on there.

Back to the plot. So there I was sat in this nuclear-hardened, there's-not-room-for-two-in-here-my-size truck, and faced with a bank of gear that I daren't touch! Basically everything is in Russian - apart from the bits that Joe has deciphered. A pair of headphones with integral mike (aircraft type), a log book, and a pen were presented to me with the instruction "It's set up to operate on 40m, oh - the 'press to talk' is that bar on the floor". Tread on it - it goes into transmit, take your foot off and you're back to hearing several hundred stations all trying to work the DR or DQ special event stations that were set up for the football World Cup award. 'So this frequency's clear, eh? Won't be in a second' thinks I. Plonking the mass of VAB onto the 'trample-to-talk' switch and off we go - "CQ 40metres, this is GB2ECR listening for a call; GB2ECR". Nothing. Try again, this time with phonetics, and just who is that talking in my ear? Oh. It's me. Thought I recognised the voice... That's clever - monitor your own audio. Take the foot of the 'TTT' and suddenly there's a pile up. Now, I'm not heavily into this "Thanks for the contact, you're 5 and 9, 73, QRZ?" type of operating. Amateur radio is about communicating and having a chat - in my opinion - so I knew that there were a lot of these people wouldn't stand a snowballs chance of getting into work the station. Sorry to those who didn't get in, but that's how it would have to be. But when you get to someone in Ayr and the report he gives is along the lines of "Dave, you're 59+60, repeat 60,dB; what's the equipment your end?" you know that the kilowatt below your right foot has done the job! What's that? A kilowatt? Isn't that illegal for amateur stations in the UK? Well, yes, probably 99.999% of the time that would be right, but you see this truck of Joe's (G4PMY) can't run any lower than a kilowatt, so he has a special dispensation from 'OfCom' to operate the transmitter at 1KW on six events per year, the Elvaston Castle radio rally being one of them. So just what was the aerial this thing was using to get rid of 1KW from the valve PA? An open-wire feeder of about 50+ foot feeding an inverted 'V' dipole. No big fancy stacked beams, just a dipole.

Fist contact was about 09:15 and the next thing I remember was that it was lunchtime and I had to take off the headphones and join the others for our meal. Cans of drink and bottles of water had appeared as if by magic during the morning - who brought them I don't know, but they were much needed! Afterwards I went back to the car to find that the milk had gone off in the heat and the inside of the car was a stupid temperature. Glad it was cooler in the truck. Getting back inside I put my GMT clock and digital thermometer onto the work surface and we switched to 20m, a process that takes even Joe about 7 or 8 minutes to tune up onto a new frequency (note: frequency, not middle of the band and then go anywhere on that band, but frequency). Stations in Sweden, Russia, and a couple of Italian stations - all gave 59+20 minimum signal reports back to us and then we switched bands again, this time to 80m to give UK folks a chance to get their callsigns into the log. A period of tuning for Joe the Maestro, a chance for a quick drink of water, and a glance at the thermometer - - 31degrees inside the truck, and that's with the door open and all the fans on! Once Joe had tuned the beast for 80m we put out a call. Then another. Then WALLOP! What a pile up! I've never worked a big pile up before, not even a relatively small one, but this was intense. Four hours later without a break I was hauled off the mike by the lads from NHARG once more, this time for a barbeque they were having to which I was invited. But they were the workers - I just sat there and told folks about their rally. Nice to have something to eat though - the cheese cobs in the car had given up and succumbed to the heat along with the milk. I don't have a copy of the log, but I recall working stations in Scotland, Cornwall, Isle of Wight, Kent, Sunderland, Northern Ireland, Wales - even Spondon. Oh - and a guy in the next field who by now has a very deaf front end on his HF rig. Good to hear several M3's on the air and proving the Foundation licence tuition useful.

I never did get to operate inside the NHARG caravan as I anticipated, but I wouldn't have swapped from the truck to the caravan for all the diet cola in the back of my car. And if I never get the opportunity to operate it again it was an experience that will remain with me for a long time. I'm just sorry that all those who were calling in never got the chance to work GB2ECR this year, but I think I'd still be there now. Sadly, the generator threw its toys out of the pram on Saturday night and boiled the back-up batteries - as you'd probably expect with 16KW of goodness knows what voltage running around various lumps of wiring unchecked because the voltage regulator had clocked off. And because that had blown the final whistle to any operating on the Sunday, it also left the organisers without any refrigeration, microwaves, or kettles! Ooops. No kettles… the worst news!

Those of you who went to the rally will know the problems they had getting everyone in but it must've been one of the best 'Elvasons' ever in terms of numbers, no doubt aided by such stunning weather. I suspect that they'll be looking at the traffic queuing problem as soon as they can to ensure that doesn't occur next year.

To Joe, the owner of the truck - big thanks for letting me operate and the instruction on how to start the 15 minute shutdown procedure, and to the members and organisers of the Elvaston rally for inviting me to help and for their hospitality.

International Lighthouses & Lightships Weekend - August 2005.

The station was set up in the Club HQ, located in the Carlton Road U.R.C., where the Clubs old HF workhorse, the legendary Yaesu FT101ZD, was pressed into service once more. This was given access to the Big Wide Outdoors courtesy of a home-brew multiband dipole which runs down the side of the Church and into the trees in their grounds.

Forty metres was busy. Very busy in fact. So much so that it was decided to put up a 132foot long wire. This was matched with a Yaesu FC902 to work on 80m. So rather than sitting on one band, we skipped here and there, first onto 80 where we captured GB2BHL over in the Merseyside area, then onto 40m and GB2GNL up in Aberdeen succumbed to Ian's Scots accent whereas the English from the rest of us appeared to fall on deaf ears! (Sorry chaps!!) Whilst on 40m we went up to the new chunk up in the 7.1000 - 7.2000 MHz area and worked into Jersey - a non-ILLW station but well worth working anyway. It wasn't long after that when we had a bit of a disaster. The 101ZD fizzed and spat for a second or two and we lost all output. Oh. Plan B then. I liberated my Kenwood TS-570D and a PSU wich we laced up with the multiband dipole into one aerial socket, and the AMU with the 80m long wire into the other. Back on air again and back onto 80m for two other contacts, GB0HL over at Happisburgh in Norfolk, then GB2GOL on the Great Orme in Llandudno.

We've got to be honest, we don't sit there slavishly sweating over a hot rig looking for contacts - we weren't an ILLW station so we can take our time and have a bit of fun between ourselves as well as chatting to one or two of the ILLW stations out there.

Sunday we had to trim operating time down as there was a Church service and we particularly don't want to come through onto their PA system… You imagine the scene - just as a prayer comes to an end, then "Solid copy old man, you're 5 and 9 here" coming through their speakers? Wouldn't help the heart condition of some folks that go there, would it? It did bring to our minds though that at some point we should do a test on all bands with the Church PA switched on to check both their and our installations out. So, despite all that, who did we manage to log on the Sunday? Scarborough was the first, GB2SCA, from the end of the Harbour Wall there, on 80m. Then a bit of rare DX for us (well, me too really, as it was me who worked him although using our Club callsign GX2DJ) was with OD5NH, Puzant, located in Beirut, on 15m. Coming a wee bit nearer home was GW2OSV in Haverfordwest up on the new part of 40m., then lower in frequency was GB0PL from the Paull Lighthouse located not that far from Hull. Last station in the log for the day was GB2FL which was being operated from Flamborough Lighthouse near Bridlington. Then it was a matter of taking down the 80m longwire and putting everything else away - apart from the FT101ZD which looks like it has to go on a recuperation holiday to the repair shop.

Big thanks to everyone who took the time and trouble to set up stations in the immediate locality of the lighthouses. Sorry to those we didn't work, but there's always next year! (We'd have loved to have activated a lighthouse, but there aren't very many in Derbyshire…

We had fun operating the GX2DJ callsign, and we're out again as a Club on the 10th and 11th September, operating as GX3ERD/P from the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway Society in Wirksworth Railway Station in Derbyshire

Dave, G1VAB

International Museums Weekend - 18th and 19th June 2005.

Once more our friends at the Silk Mill Museum in Derby hosted our station for this event.

After setting up the Clubs rig (a bomb-proof FT101ZD and an external AMU) and connecting a trap dipole we'd previously put up at the museum, we went on the air on the Saturday morning. Forty metres seemed to be long skip as the only IMW stations we could hear were at the Geevor Tin Mine in Cornwall and the museum in Orkney, neither of them could hear us when we called. All those stations in-between just didn't appear at all during the day. We did work some non-museum stations and finally managed contact with two stations in Italy, one in Belgium, two in the Netherlands, and one in the Ukraine. During the day we had a visit from BBC Radio Derby who took an interview with the two operators regarding amateur radio, how we got into it, etc.

As the station is based inside the museum we can only operate when it's open to the public so Sunday we could only operate from 13:00 to 16:00 local. But conditions had changed and we could work UK-based museum stations for a while, then long-skip again, hen that would fade away and local would come back. What a mess! Out of all that we managed to contact five museum stations; Papplewick Pumping Station in Nottinghamshire; the Secret Nuclear Bunker in Essex; Brooklands Museum; Royal Signals Museum at Hendon; and - finally - the Geevor Tin Mine museum in Cornnwall. Non-IMW stations we worked in Weston-Super-Mare; Germany; Slovenia; and Sweden.

Obviously we were speaking to the public as they came in too and as a result of this we gained a new member which HAS to be good news in itself!

So there we have it, not much in the way of log-book filling due to the conditions being somewhat turbulent, but a new member and an interview with the local radio station has to be some sort of payback!

Thanks to Harry, M1BYT, for organising the IMW event once again. An unsung hero for sticking with doing most of this work on his own. Take a bow Harry.

And whilst I'm doing the thanks bit, again we have to thank the Curator and staff of the Silk Mill Museum for putting up with us once more. And we've still to take the aerial down…..

Dave, G1VAB