I missed the March SHF due to work getting busy. I nearly missed April for the same reason and was late setting off from home. I finally arrived at Chilton at 8.30pm and with the first hour lost I quickly set-up 13cm and 3cm to try and get some QSO's. As usual I was co-sited with Robert M0FXX/P at the far western end of the Bury Lane Car Park (IO91IN22QU). It quickly got very dark!
 |
| Big Dish 3cm and 13cm Fun at Chilton |
On 13cm conditions were with flat as a pancake with deep QSB. With just 0.8W and the 1m WiFi Grid Dish higher than normal at 4.5m on 3 swaged poles instead of the normal 2, I worked 18 stations with best ODX being Tony G8DMU/P (IO94CB, 281km).
On 3cm with 1W and the 1m Offset Gibertini Dish it was had going, conditions were truly awful. I could not hear or be heard by anyone over about 150km. First failure was with Clive GW4MBS after a call out on Zello (SHF Chat), then unsuccessful attempts followed with Ken G0WZV, Ben G4BXD, Peter G3PHO, Tony G8DMU/P, Ben M7TXR/P and David M0GHZ throughout the evening. I completed just 5 QSO's with best ODX being Keith G4ODA (IO92WS, 157km) at the end although that was marginal. My G2 transverter started off 14kc high and stabilised at 12kc high as the temperature dropped. I must make a start on building my new 3cm G3-based system which will be frequency locked - a luxury!
Overall it was an fun evening and great to be out again on GHz. I should finish mid-table in terms of normalised points on both bands for Northern Fells Contest Group. It all helps to extend our lead in the UKAC 6/4/2/70/23/SHF series. I'm looking forward to fixing 6cm SSB, making some more QSO's on 6cm WBFM and finally getting 9cm up and running again, as well as putting the 24GHz gear on the tripod for the first 24/37/76GHz contest in mid-May.