It was a lovely warm sunny Sunday afternoon for the April UKuG Low Band (23/13/9cm) contest, so I ventured back to the Pink Road layby at Lacey Green (IO91OQ29SR) for a couple of hours of GHz fun. I took 13cm and 9cm hoping to get a handful of contacts on each band.
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| Pick Road layby, looking West |
On 13cm with the IC-9700 and 0.8W into the 1m Grid Dish at 5m I worked 11 stations at a leisurely pace in under 3 hours, with Martyn G3UKV (IO82RR, 167km) as my ODX. I also heard the Martlesham GB3MHZ beacon on 2320.830MHz at 559 over a distance of 148km for the first time. I very nearly worked Maarten ON/PA0MHE (JO11PF, 288Km) I could hear him clearly and he heard me once with my QRP, but we unfortunately didn't complete a QSO.
9cm was disappointingly broken, the Pluto SDR was dead on both receive and transmit, I think it could well be terminal. I've had a lot of fun with it over the past 4 years with QSO's on 2.3GHz 2.32GHz, 3.4GHz and a good number of QSO's on 5.7GHz. I'll put it on the bench at some point and see if it's doing anything, but I expect it's departed this world for another! :(
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| Pink Road layby, looking South |
It was also the Spring 50MHz RSGB contest and before leaving the site I fired-up the FT-817ND with its 6m whip and worked Charles G0SKA who lives locally in the same village!
It was a shame that there was hardly anyone logged in to KST to work, but it was nice to be out and to have a play and the weather was kind for a change which was a bonus!