The continuing tales from Oysterber Farm

Hello Folks,

Here we are at the beginning of a new Contest Season and looking forward to a good International Dx Contest.

Members of the group started collecting the equipment around 10am and we arrived at Oysterber Farm around lunch time.













Antenna's for the contest consisted of a nest of dipoles covering Topband 80m and 40m






























a 20m vertical with phased array and verticals for 40m, 10m and 15m




























Damien was good enough to take his caravan and it was used as an area for sleeping and socialising during the contest. This worked well for the group leaving Hancock's Hut free for contesting without much in the way of background noise.

We were low on the number of people who were available to set the Antenna's up and it was great to see our newest members Paul m6APB and our other Paul 2E0EET helping out at the event. The rest of the team consisted of Frank G8BME, Martin M0ZIF and Damien our contest manager.

Operators for the event were:


Joe 2E0JEX













Martin M0ZIF













Andrew G0LWU













Ian G0VGS















Looking left to right the picture show Paul 2E0EET and our second Paul M6APB who popped in during the contest to learn a little about the logging software and operating practices during a contest. The pictures above were taken at Heron Corn Mill which is the subject of the Next Blog.

Kev G6FKE taking a well earned break on the ipad after his daytime nap and evening meal .... all joking apart he did work the graveyard shift with Brian and Mark and he was getting ready for another graveyard shift with the aid of Joe and Ian.

Other operators were: Damien G0LLG our contest manager, Brian G0RDH, Mark M0DGK and Chris G4LDS

It would be remiss of me not to mention Barrie and Cathy who hosted the contest and provided food cooked by Stephany's son Spencer who is an accomplished chief at a local restaurant.

The group beat last years score which is always nice to do.

Thanks need to go to Damien for making sure that times were covered by asking members to enter 2 hour blocks of time they could operate. Damien also acted as QM for the event and made sure those who asked for it were thoroughly fed up throughout the contest.

The next Blog will be available shortly covering National Science and Engineering Week at Heron Corn Mill.

73
Brian (The Reluctant Contester)