It was the Tuesday after the wet Sunday, and I found myself returning to Christmas Common this time in the dry! I arrived onsite at 9pm a bit later than planned and started to move the gear from the car to the picnic benches. This site is is not as convenient as others and gear has to moved in multiple hops down a heavily wooded path.
It was starting to get dark so the head torch was invaluable for attaching the various dishes to the tripod. I decide to spend the first hour or so trying to get contacts on 3cm SSB and 6cm WBFM, and then try 9cm - before the higher bands ended at 10.30pm local time. That would leave time to focus on 13cm before the contest finished at 11.30pm.
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| 2m talkback, 9cm, 6cm & 3cm on the tripod! |
On 10GHz the evening started slowly with failed attempts to work Peter G3PHO (IO93) and Nick G4KUX (IO94). I'd worked both in the June SHF UKAC from Lacey Green and the July SHF UKAC from Dunstable Downs. Christmas Common is not as good to the North. I also tried with Pete G4CLA (IO92) but the dish was beaming into a high hedge and trees. Next I swung around to the NW for end-stop contacts over the reliable 82km LOS path to Cleeve Hill with Stewart G0LGS/P and Matt 2E0MDJ/P. The third and final 3cm contact was with G4ASR in the Welsh Mountains IO81MX at 143km. I was chuffed to finally work Dave after several tries from various locations.
The 2m talkback frequency 144.390MHz was quiet, most people seemed to be using ON4KST and Zello was also busy with chatter. On 5.7GHz WBFM both Stewart and Matt were quickly worked. I had an intermittent mic problem which meant that they could identify my strong carrier but the audio was unusually low. Something to fix for next time. There were no other stations to work as Mark M0RKX/P and Matt G8XYJ/P were not out.
Towards the end of the contest it started to drizzle a bit (oh no rain again!) and I decided to switch onto 9cm to try and grab some last minute QSO's. The tin can dish feed was hastily strapped next to the 3cm horn, and the DB6NT transverter (in its yellow fishing float box enclosure!) taped to the underside of the 10GHZ box. With 200mW (the same output power as 3cm) into the same 60cm Offset Dish, I managed to grab a couple of quick QSO's with Neil G4BRK (IO91HP) at 28km and Pete G4CLA (IO92JL) at 95km. I heard Keith G4ODA (IO92WS) at 137km and he could hear me - but we ran out of time to complete a QSO!
Jules M0UGA/P was co-sited with his 5.7GHz WBFM system and big 1.1m grid dish. But with my frantic end-of-contest-QSO's on 9cm, we ran out of time to complete a local QSO with each other this month.
The evening finished with 5 QSO's on 13cm facilitated by Carl M0ICR who was also co-sited, and kindly offered to share his gear. My best ODX was again with Dennis G3UVR (IO83KH) at 237km, the same as last month from Dunstable Downs.
Interestingly no stations on any band were worked from North through East and South to West so basically 0 to 270 degrees. This proves that Christmas Common is significantly blocked and really only good for West to North-West (270 to 315 degrees) and marginal between North West and North (315 to 160 degrees). For September SHF UKAC I'll try a different site that has better all-round QSO potential.