EI4VXV December 2006 / January 2007
PAGE (STILL....) UNDER CONSTRUCTION !
After the fun we had in IO52 last year, we decided to take our winter holiday in Ireland again this year. I took equipment for 2m. We spent one week near Clifden, Galway in IO43XL and one week near Bruckless, Donegal in IO54TP. Minutes before we finished packing the car and leaving the UK, I received a phone call from COMREG informing me that I had been granted an Irish Visitor's Permit with the call sign EI4VXV and a permit for 4m. Unfortunately the news came too late in the day for me to prepare equipment for the 4m band.
IO43XL December 24th to December 30th
23/12/2006 We arrived on site at 17:00 and discovered that the 'large garden' had 11KV power lines running from East to West across the middle of it so there was no space for the 36' mast. The space behind and at each end of the cottage was set to hard standing and has telephone wires suspended above. The space behind the cottage was on a very steep slope.
When daylight arrived I reassessed the space available and decided to put the mast on the gravel covered surface at the Western end of the property. Getting guy stakes into the ground proved to be very difficult, almost everywhere I tried to put a stake in I hit rock about 6 inches down. Positioning the mast was severely restricted by the 11KV power lines and the telephone lines. Eventually the mast was erected with the antenna at 25' above the ground – looking almost directly into the power lines.
The cottage was located further around the peninsula than we expected (either the on-line map is wrong, or I made an error) and consequently did not have such a good take-off to the East as we thought it would have. If you have Google Earth then this is where we expected to be, and this is where we were.
Having built the station and had a listen around the band it came as no surprise to find that the noise level was high. Most of the time it was S5 but occasionally as high as S9. The quietest direction was about 150 degrees, not where most of the activity was likely to be.
I spent a lot of time trying to work anything at all through the noise. If you were one of the stations that spent hours calling, thank you for trying.
After a couple of days I decided to raise the height of the antenna to 36'. This was quite a challenge given the space available, the guy stakes were only 10' out from the base of the mast. With the antenna at 36' the noise level was significantly better but by no means good. I heard the GB3SSS beacon on several occasions but never heard GB3VHF despite leaving the receiver running overnight with WSJT monitoring in JT65B every night.
Towards the end of the week the wind picked up to gale force 9 so the antenna was lowered to 12' above the ground. I didn't expect to work much at all with the antenna at this height but as it was possible to elevate the antenna by tilting the mast I managed a few EME QSO's using JT65B. Given the success of the few EME QSO's that I had, I wish that I had tried EME earlier in the week as I may have got more contacts in the log.
Map of squares worked from IO43
IO54TP December 31st to January 5th
We arrived on site late on Saturday afternoon just as the weather was starting to turn bad. We were met by the cottage owners and made to feel very welcome. Permission was obtained to erect the antenna but we were informed that storm force winds were forecast for the next 24 hours. This site was very different to IO43, located on the top of a hill with a clear view in most directions. The nearest 11KV power lines were about 1/4mile to the south.
Due to the bad weather we spent Sunday on a pleasant sight seeing tour of Donegal. I put the 2m yagi and FT847 in the car in the hope of operating /P from IO55. By the time we reached IO55 the wind was gusting in excess of 100km/h. I may be keen, but I'm not totally mad. We took a few photos and returned to the cottage!
On Monday we assembled the antenna and found a suitable site for the mast. As space was limited and the wind was still fairly strong I decided to put the antenna at 24' rather than 36'. In IO43 it was difficult to drive the guy stakes into the ground because of rocks. Here the ground was so soft that in places it was possible to push a 4' guy stake all the way into the ground with ease. Once the mast was raised additional stakes were added. Attention was then turned to building the station. With the station built the first thing I listened for was GB3VHF, and there it was, not especially strong but there almost all of the time. Otherwise the band was quiet in all directions except to the South where I had about S3 of broadband noise and a little power line noise.
Map of squares worked from IO54
QSL Cards
Cards should be printed by the end of Febuary 2007. If you want to QSL directly please try to get your card to me before then, otherwise all cards will be sent via the buro. QSL via G0AFH. My address is OK in the call book but use this form to contact me if you can't find it.
Equipment.
The combination of the new Javornik II transverter and the FT1000MP worked very well. The Javornik II was able to provide ample power to drive my GS35 amplifier to 400W. The receiver seemed to work well too. It's been a long time since I've been able to hear more than I could work, but I heard several G's that could not hear me! For WSJT I used a simple transformer coupled interface between the PC and the Packet interface of the FT1000. Details on how to configure the FT1000 can be found here (thanks to Sine S53RM). I found that the standard opto isolated PTT interface would not key the FT1000, so I threw a crude interface together using a relay and 9V battery.
The M Squared 5WL yagi worked as well as ever.
Over the two week period that we were in EI I used about 10Mbytes of GPRS data at a cost of £8.00/Megabyte!
Other Info.
Our Seat Ibiza 1.9TDi averaged 47MPG and covered a total of 1530 miles during the two weeks that we were away from home. Not at all bad when you consider that it was necessary to remove the rear seats to fit everything in. The journey took us through G, GW, EI, GI,GM, and finally back to G.
Acknowledgements.
Thank you to...
The owners of the cottages for permission to put antennae in the garden.
Charles EI5FK and Paul G4RRA for regular cluster spots.
Robin G8APZ for weather forecasts.
Guy DL8EBW for the Make More Miles on VHF web pags.
Bo OZ2M for the VUSHF DX-peditions web pages and Shouts application.
Gabriel EA6VQ for the VHF DXNews Pages, VQLog, and KST Telnet application.
ON4KST for the KST Chat website.
To all those that called / worked me.
And especially to Pauline M3OFL for understanding my desire to listen to white noise for hours on end :-)
73
Ian.
