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It doesn’t seem five minutes since we were on Barra last year, and the time has come around again for our annual trip to the Scottish Islands. This year, as we did in 2008, we are teaming up with the Sands Contest Group from Lancashire plus Brendan EI6IZ, to visit the island of Arran. We will be using the Sands Callsign, MS0SCG.

The Sands guys (see here) take a lot of the credit for the organisation and we would like to thank them for that. Mark and Paddy will be donning their chef’s outfits again to keep us all fed and watered and judging by our last joint operation to Jura, we will be very well catered for. Steve G0MTD, Mark M0WCR, Glynn M0XUH and Paul M1PAF will be making the trip from the Workington club.

Equipment wise we’ll be taking four Elecraft K3′s with various flavours of amplification, plus a Yaesu FT2000D and a couple of Kenwood TS-2000′s. Antennas will be mostly vertical’s and we have the kit to assemble a phased array for 80m and 40m in conjunction with other vertical antennas including a vertical Moxon for 20m which has done us proud on previous visits.

Depending on the weather and how we are doing there will probably be some portable op’s from the sea shore in addition to the main station at Drumla Farm.

The 18th and the 25th will be set up / break down days so most of our operating will be on the 19th to the 24th September, and we will be on most of the HF bands plus VHF/UHF, conditions permitting. Brendan is a CW enthusiast so we should be fairly active on the key, something we’ve lacked in previous years.

Looking forward to working loads of you!

Lots of good stuff discussed at the last meeting including :-

Support to the Wainwrights award programme,

Trip to Blackpool rally (11 April), may even have our own table,

Improvements and availability of Keith’s (G0EMM) internet link,

Norman G7MRL+ others are off to Islay again in June with a much better location and high hopes of some good 2M conditions.

Request to support the 3 Peaks yacht race in June, Paul (M1PAF) is getting a few more details,

Licence courses, see previous post

Future stuff, Colin M6XSD is going to give us a talk on APRS + a few other bits at some point when he’s sussed it out fully. Next meeting I’m going to do a bit on using BV7 print to help with the process of QSLing.

All for now, Steve (G0MTD)

I’ve added a short presentation file in the library section that shows some of the details from our Barra expedition.

Cheers Steve

G0MTD

The cards for expedition have finally arrived. All labels have been printed and all cards sent direct to myself have been responded to. The cards went in the post 30 Dec so expect to see them in the next week or so. Thanks to all stations who sent IRC’s or dollars, there was just enough to cover the cost of the postage.

All other cards will be sent via the bureau once we’ve got round to sticking on nearly 6000 labels !!!

Copy of the final card attached

All the best to everyone for the New Year and here’s to another successful expedition in 2010

Steve G0MTD

Well we are finally on our way back home and we are currently sailing past Mull to Oban. The final count was 6291 calls in the log and thanks to all stations that called us. Sorry if you didn’t get to work us but we tried hard to work anyone that we could hear. The logs have been uploaded to the website now and the only issue left to resolve relates to PSK31 contacts that are currently listed as SSB, so if you worked us in data modes but it shows on the log search as SSB don’t worry it will be corrected.

We now need to get QSL cards ordered once we’ve picked a suitable picture.

We’ve had a great time and hope our operating keeps improving each year. A presentation about our trip will be posted in the file library after the dust has settled.

73 from Paul, Steve, Mark and Glyn

We are currently making our last few contacts and have put up a quarter wave vertical right on the shore. We will be QRT finally shortly after 1800z.

73 M1PAF

Well we are still here and still making contacts. We have had to move from our accommodation as we only had it available until Saturday. The stations are running from a generator and we have an excellent spot 1 mile north of the airport looking out due east. No amplifiers in use today but we still seem to be getting out well and are now approaching 6200 contacts and the sun is shining!

73 Paul M1PAF

Here’s a picture of Barra ferry terminal without a ferry – which is exactly what it will look like tomorrow! The Sunday ferry has been cancelled as a result of the horrendous weather. At close of play today we’ve logged 5929 contacts as we couldn’t put any kind of aerial up due to the 70mph winds so we had to rely on a mobile whip (thanks Peter). We will get out tomorrow at some point and crack the 6000 barrier as the Vatersay Boys are playing and we might be a little worse for wear!

73 Paul M1PAF

We took some time out today to visit Eriskay, Benbecular and South Uist and to get out of the house. Not much radio today but still broke the 4500 contacts barrier (our last total when we visited). Looks like the Jura total is safe unless we have a real run on Friday and Saturday.

73 Paul M1PAF

Pictures of the aerial farm – in order 20m vertical Moxon, 17m 5/8 wave vertical, 40m phased verticals and 40/80m dipoles. The directional antennas all beam east as there is a large hill behind us. Eastern propagation is greatly enhanced by our proximity to the sea.

73 Paul M1PAF