May/June - Ilkley Moor

So the 144 UKAC at the start of May had dreadful weather - gale force wind and lashing rain.  Putting the aerial up was fun, it's surprising how much pressure the wind puts on a 2 inch wide pole and the getting the pole into the clamp was rather scary!!  The clamp keeps the antenna fixed but it's not nice jumping out of the car and getting soaked to change antenna direction.  Still, the weather was no better elsewhere in the UK so the final result of third place was pleasing.

June's 144 UKAC was little better, the weather forecast was again very windy so I was prepared with ropes and pickets borrowed from G4ZAP stock.  This time, I couldn't even get 2 x 12' poles vertical - without the aerial!!  So had to drop back to 6' + 12' and ropes.  For this leg, Erik turned up in 93AD and naturally won with almost twice the points of second placed G0EAK.  I finished a reasonable 4th.


Then at the end of June was the second 70 UKAC and a chance to try out the new transverter feeding a 5ele Powabeam.  I couldn't get on top of the hill so operation was from the side of the road:

The little white dot to the right of the mast clamp is the moon.













First time on 4m for years so this was a bit of a learning curve but 4th place was a good result.

July - out with G4ZAP/G0VHF doing VHFNFD at Walton on the Naze for the first weekend - radioed out for the UKAC!!

4 x 12 ele, top at 60'

A New Site - IO93BV

So with a fixed transverter, April was a big improvement (92 contacts/32 multipliers/472k points/4th place, but it was time to find a new location for the summer.  I was also getting fed up with people asking me what I was doing in the pub car park.  

The best hill with a road in West Yorkshire is Ilkley Moor and there’s a few places to park a car at the side of the road with a good take off for most of the UK. 

The public road peaks at 380m but doesn’t go right to the top and there is a significant obstruction roughly 20m higher blocking ENE to ESE.  There's a gated track to a higher area at 390m which was originally claimed by police/fire services but their towers were removed a few years ago (thanks to Airwave).  A small comms station remains and is still gated/fenced off.  By a stroke of luck, it turned out that I knew the ‘right man’ through work and I was able to get access through the gate to the top.  The access track ends north of the existing building and mast so the site is slightly obstructed for a UKAC contest - but great for Denmark and Germany!

The view to the south/southeast from Ilkley Moor.  The boulders are supposed to prevent off-roaders churning up the ground.

Feb/March – building a 70MHz transverter

Back in the 1980s’ I was very active on 70MHz from home with a homebrew transverter (Jewell and Powis) feeding a single 4CX250 for legal limit power.  I had decided that since 144MHz UKAC was going nicely that I could fit in the four 70MHz contests, again probably just in the AL section.  So the transverter was found (in the loft again) but I quickly realised it only had 0.5W output – enough to drive the ‘250 but not enough for the contest.  Probably also a bit average on performance so I decided that a new transverter would be a good thing to bring me up to state of the art.  One quick email to G4DDK and a new unit was in the post.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to get everything working before the 31st of March but I was ready to go for June.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the G4DDK Anglian transverter in a 70MHz version with the 7W amplifier module on the rear panel.  The box and cabling dates from 1985, just needed a quick re-wire of the DC, add some SMA plugs and away it went.  For the record, 7W out with second and third harmonics >-66dBc - impressive.  The front end is some modern device so no need to worry about the system noise figure and 24dB gain.

Jan, Feb, March

January – first time out and just about everything went well until I jumped out of the car to turn the antenna and walked straight into the horizontal pole on the roof-rack!!  Fortunately the glasses survived although the log sheets have blood stains.  So first lesson – try things out close to home so you can get rescued (or call an ambulance) if necessary.  I ended up with 50 contacts, 28 multipliers and 10th position – not a bad start.

February / March – icy, slippy and cold.  I’ve always owned cold weather kit but make sure you are prepared.  It’s surprising how much cooler and windier it can be at the top of a hill so wear layers and waterproofs and a good warm hat.  Feb - 54 contacts, 26 multipliers, 7th place

March –  After February’s contest I was unhappy tuning speed of the IC706, you just can’t get up and down the band to search and pounce.  So I pulled the original HGT system out of the loft: IC735 and a homebrew transverter.  Side by side with the 706, receive performance on a weak GB3VHF beacon was very similar and a good 10W output available on transmit.  However, for the March contest, things were not quite right with horribly distorted locals being received.  I was able to get the transverter onto some good test kit at work revealing an oscillating input amplifier.  A quick re-build was required to calm down the BF981.  While sorting the preamp, I also noticed a 5V regulator was getting very hot and this was being caused by a 20 year old tantalum capacitor failing short circuit.  The regulator was preventing the tant from getting enough energy to go bang and was still outputting 5V.  Third lesson – check your kit properly at home before going out portable!!  March - 59/32/5th

Getting the antenna in the air

So 144MHz.  I wanted to keep things simple, I didn’t want to be taking afternoon holidays to prepare so I decided to start with a simple set-up, taking part in the AL section (10W, single aerial). So I got my IC706 from the loft and bought a 9 element Powabeam yagi from the DX Shop.  Working out the mast took a little more thought but MM0CUG has a drive-on aerial support that looked suitable although this is only ok for small, lightweight aerials.  I worked out that a pole clamped horizontally to my car roof rack would be a solid second anchor and also allow the beam to be rotated by hand and clamped tight.  I had a couple of 12' poles available (ZAP spares) so putting the beam at 24' was ok for one man to push up.  My local friendly scaffold company were happy to supply a couple of pole joiners and 90 degree clamps for cash.  So a quick try out on the road outside my house and all seemed ok.

 



MM0CUG mast support

 

 








Mast gets clamped here, slacken clamp to rotate

Start of a new radio blog

Time to show people what I get up to on Tuesday evenings!

I’ve been active doing VHF contests for over 25 years as part of the A1 contest group, G4ZAP/P but due to family and commitments I have not been not active from home for many years.  So while doing VHFNFD in July 2014, Tony G4NBS mentioned that the UKAC contests were a big event with leading stations working over 100 QSOs in two and a half hours.  That seemed like fun so I set a plan to be ready to take part in the 2015 season.

9 element Powabeam on top of two 4m scaffold poles


This is my site at IO93DV - otherwise known as the car park of the Royalty pub on Otley Chevin. About 255m asl, this is the view looking roughly south east and is a popular vantage point, being at the NW end of the Leeds Bradford airport runway.  This site is 5 minutes drive from home and has beer - nice!!