The first weekend in October is the RSGB and R1 UHF/SHF contest 70cm to 248GHz or "October UHF". The weather all weekend was particularly grim with heavy rain and wind. On the Sunday a couple of locals had planned to go out to activate hill tops in IO91. The objective was to grab some points from what we thought would be easy QSO’s on 24GHz. Dave G1EHF/P went to Coombe Gibbet (IO91GI25), I drove to Bisham Hill (IO91ON71) and Noel G8GTZ/P was just a few km away from Dave to try and work him on 24GHz and 122GHz. Barry was also out on 24GHz. In the end, despite a lot of effort, no QSO’s were completed.
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| Sheltering from extreme rain on 24GHz |
Bisham Hill (IO91ON) was where I’d worked Barry two weeks before when he was at Walbury. It was raining and utterly miserable conditions. For over an hour I tried to make the 53km path go, but there was so much water vapour and I was having a few technical (mostly battery power-related) issues - which did not help. A bin liner and umbrella were deployed to protect the kit! In the end we all gave up, the storm beat us and we all drove home to dry our equipment, ready for another day's fun.