Sands Amateur Radio Communications Group (Morecambe): “World Flora & Fauna” or the mysterious case of the obligatory Bacon Bun

Jewel In The Crown

Hi Folks,

I'd like to thank Stepany G1LAT Ray a good friend and summit walker and Barrie G1JYB for going out and working an event that's new to me and I dare say many others. I'd also like to thank Barrie for putting fingers to keyboard and giving us an interesting report for the Blog. Barrie is also the photographer for the event.

I have added a few bits here and there and pictures of the coiled antenna and the Elecraft tuner have been borrowed from the respective websites.

I hope you enjoy reading Barrie's blog entry as much as I have.

Brian G0RDH

(The Reluctant Contester)

On Wednesday 31^st August 2011 and after our obligatory Bacon Bun and Coffee in Kirkby Lonsdale Steph G1LAT, Ray and myself G1JYB drove to the Car Park: SD 55237-76163 and within 30 minutes we were at the Trig Point and setting up the Station.

This time we were focused on HF 20m and not our normal VHF, the reason for our visit was to activate the area for “World Flora & Fauna” an Amateur Radio International Award Program. Take a look if you have never heard of it before.

http://www.m0oxo.com/world-flora-fauna.html

Anyway the equipment we used was as follows:

Radio ~ Yaesu FT817ND

There are plenty of reviews and sites where you can find information on this excellent feature packed transceiver. I have just included a link to http://www.yaesu.com for general information.

Mast ~ 7m Telescopic GRP Fishing Pole.

Antenna ~ M0CVO OCFD (Off Centre Fed Dipole)

This antenna will operate on 40, 20 and 10m without an ATU and 80, 60, 15, 6 and WARC Bands with an ATU.

4:1 Balun

The picture below can be found on the m0cvoantennas website. It was found to work very well for the Flora and Fauna activity and was easy to set up, the whole station was up and running very quickly.

http://m0cvoantennas.webs.com/apps/webstore/products/show/1190179

Power Supply

Lightmax 5000 High Discharge Li-Po Battery ~ 14.8 Volts with G8BME Voltage Reducer. A BIG thanks here to Frank for designing and constructing this vital piece of equipment for us.

Tuner

Elecraft T1 Auto Antenna Tuner ~ a fantastic piece of kit, but not needed on this occasion.

Inside the Elecraft T1

If you would like to learn more about the Elecraft T1 tuner please click on the link below where you find more images and information on the Elecraft website

http://www.elecraft.com/T1/T1.htm

As we were only QRP it was great to work many stations all over Europe from Russia to the Azores, it’s amazing how many stations were interested in working and collecting the WFF area, more popular than SOTA. We also worked SOTA of course on 20m, 4m & 2m.

Stephany and Ray checking a few things out before operating.

Stephany working 4m

Hutton Roof Crags is a real Jewel in our area for going Portable and I can recommend it to you all. It takes 30 minutes to walk to the summit from the Car Park and as well as being a SOTA & WFF location, it is also fantastic for any portable operation that you may be interested in, a very flat summit, so no problem erecting antennas and if need be a tent could be erected to give a very comfortable Portable Shack, give it a try one day.