The June SHF UKAC was on the same day as July M0UGA’s birthday, so we decided to double-up and celebrate on Walbury Hill. At 297 metres (974 ft) above sea level, it is the highest hill in Berkshire and the highest natural point in South East England. I arrived at 7pm and Jukes was already set-up ready to go on 6cm WBFM and 13cm.
The weather quickly turned and we were soon engulfed in a wet blanket of mist, up in the clouds and it became very chilly and damp and as it got dark visibility was down less than a metre. All this water vapour around us was likely not conducive to great microwave radio propagation!
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| G1DFL (left) with "Birthday Boy" Jules, M0UGA/P |
We quickly put up my mast with dish’s for 6cm WBFM, and the 9cm/3cm. unfortunately no one else was out within range on 6cm WBFM so I just worked Jules for a solitary QSO. With 13cm starting later at 9.30pm local time, for the first 2 hours we focussed on 3cm and 9cm, trying to get as many QSO’s between us whilst respecting the “at least 15-minutes between QSO’s” VHFCC rule when using shared equipment.
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| Record 6 QSO's on 9cm from Walbury Hill |
On 3cm, Jules and I both worked our Hereford buddies Stewart G0LGS/P and Matt 2EOMDJ/P over on Cleve Hill IO91XW at 76km, and David M0GHZ 53km away in Chippenham IO81VK who was very loud. I worked Neil G4LDR who was end-stop from Salisbury IO91CE, a local at 30km.
By far the best band of the evening was 9cm (3.4GHz aka UK 5G!) which went really well despite the usual QRP (150mW) and soup-tin feed still - strapped to the 3cm horn on the 60cm offset dish! A record 6 QSO’s were completed with David M0GHZ, Mike G8CUL, Pete G4CLA, a very pleasing initial contact with Gordon (fellow Drowned Rat) G3WJG, G4LDR. ODX was a marginal contact with Keith G4ODA (IO92WS) at 182km. Jules also worked G8CUL and M0GHZ. We used Carl M0ICR’s FT-857 as the 70cm SSB IF which is a super mobile rig. My last QSO with G4LDR was completed using a lash-up Baofeng 70cm handheld as the IF on NBFM.
On 13cm 8 QSO’s were completed with ODX being Mel G8EOP (IO93EQ) at 260km using Jules’s kit (40W PE1RKI amp, 1M WiFi Grid Dish). All things considered it was a super fun evening, we made 39 SHF GHz QSO’s between us from our high perch in the clouds!
On 13cm 8 QSO’s were completed with ODX being Mel G8EOP (IO93EQ) at 260km using Jules’s kit (40W PE1RKI amp, 1M WiFi Grid Dish). All things considered it was a super fun evening, we made 39 SHF GHz QSO’s between us from our high perch in the clouds!