Andrew at GB100J

Andrew G0LWU missed the IOTA contest because he is at the big Scout Jamboree, here is his letter to Sands

We only got power last night, after arriving last Saturday.

We have put up an awesome antenna farm, I will try to get pictures
back at some point. We have two tri-banders, one with 6 elements,
one on a three section mast the other on a 5-section. Dipoles for
40m, 80m and trapped dipole for all WARC bands. We also have 2 linears
PSK, SSTV, and SDR radio.

There are 10 antennas up in total.

Anybody wanting GB100J please email me with band/mode/freq/time.
We are operating with 40 operators 24X7 on all HF bands for about 10 days.

Hoping to get Swedish King in the shack (marquee) as he is a
scout and is licensed.

Met Prince William yesterday afternoon.

Back home about 9th August.

Regards to all.

Andrew

Great IOTA Contest

It has been a very successful contest this year! We smashed last year's score and ended up with nearly 1000 contacts and some serious points. The weather has been brilliant and everything ran like clockwork. The stations were well attended by both Amateurs and members of the public, who were keen to see what was going on. Pack down time was just under 2 hours and we then retreated back to Linda and Ian's home for a cool beer or two. This evening we have a "business "meeting to go over the events of the weekend and to start planning Field Day which is coming up in just over a month!

Saturday

Wonderful weather so far, although quite breezy. Last night we managed to get one mast up and the other one ready to accept the Spiderbeam. This morning, by about 11am all things were in place. The 10 meg internet link is working well after a few initial teething problems. This afternoon Mick M0BZR was with us and had a hefty spell on the 20m station, its been a while since Mick has had chance to do any serious contesting. People have been down to see what is going on and refreshments suitably given. By around 5pm we had worked about 300 stations and the bands seem quite busy. It is getting towards meal time now and after that it will depend on how long the higher bands stay open as to what bands will take us through the night.

IOTA This Weekend

Yes folks its that time of year again and the weather forecast sounds a bit grim. It is amazing how quickly the year has passed and IOTA 2007 sees us back at Sunderland Point for this 24 hour contest. We will probably set up the antennas and masts on Friday evening but, again, it depends on the weather. Kev is cooking for the crew on Saturday evening and has promised a "spicy" sausage casserole! The new 50' mast has arrived and so have the QSL cards for the GB2AOS event earlier this year. The plan is to write the QSL cards over the weekend while anyone not currently operating the contest has time on their hands. Paul is providing us with a microwave link to the university enabling us to have internet access to GB7MBC for DXCluster information. The residents have no broadband facilities and this is the only way we can use the dxcluster as "packet" access is no longer possible.

End of Contest

Finally finished an hour ago and uploaded the logs. This years total is over 600 qso's. The last 3 hours have been very busy indeed and the weather was finally calm enough to get the beam to full height. Gary has done most of the operating for the last few hours, and Kev is still in bed, as usual, but he was awake for nearly 36 hours. Now to have a quick look at Gary's Elecraft K2, which for some unknown reason, fails to work!
Good weekend!

This Year's IARU

This weekend's contest has been fairly slow going compared to last year but this morning we are making steady progress. Just around 150,000 points at this time. There has been plenty of good DX about with South America being very good. Two of our operators are asleep at the moment with Gary and Ian running on 15m at the moment.