Les, Sue, and Billy arrived on site early Friday afternoon to set up the station, it made for thirsty work as it turned out to be one of the hottest weekends of the year.
Les brought along the mobil 100' tower, and this was soon in position outside the visitors center.
We used the KISS method for the station.....Keep it Simple Stupid.....
The G5RV was fixed to the tower at around 40' with one end tied to a conveniant tree, the other to 20' pole fixed to my FreeLander.
Above that we had the 6, 2, & 70.
An hour saw the tower and antennas up.
Time for a well earned cuppa...............................
Another couple of hours and the rest of the station was up and running.
Les and Billy then went through the prossess of testing the set up fully, the gods of radio were with us from the off as everything was working 100% perfect from the off!
A quick flick round 6 returned summer E's to most of Europe.
HF was full to the rafters with quality Dx in all modes.
We had been alocated the call GB0BMM for the event, but as I didn't come into effect till midnight we used the club call
G1WKS/A, and we were soon into pile up situations in all modes and bands.
Digital mode operation was to take the lead over the weekend, the majority of the QSO's were in either BPSK31 or RTTY, with some of the lesser used modes also being used.
JT65A provided some excellent transatlantic contacts in the early hours after 20m finally closed.
Digital macros were fine tuned to allow for full automation, although Billy did a lot of add hoc typing to the Dx stations he had worked under his own call sign.
At the stroke of midnight we were into an instant pile up on digital with calls coming in from all over, the propogation from the Caribbian and the USA was great with genuine 599+ signals, even the West Coast of South America was booming!
The following morning saw the arrival of more club members, and their families.
Ken G3KIP was next up for a stint on the mike, along with Les, and Malc.
The hands on History event was pulling in the crowds, many of whome stopped by the station, where there questions were answered as to what the station was all about, we had a good supply of RSGB papper work, and generated a lot of interest.
All were impressed as to what could be achived with a simple bit of wire strung between some trees and a car.
Great interest was shown in the QSO's with the other museum stations.
We were very fortunate with not only the weather, but the propogation was great too. Strange to say the least, but great!
It was continualy shifting short to long, West to East, allowing for not only Dx on 20m but also inter UK at 20+dB.
It was fun to work UA9 UA0 on 20m then to work a GB station on the same frequency at +20.
