Final Day

We are in the final hour or so of operation on most bands but will
probably leave 40m running tonight and pack it in the morning. 20m has
proved fruitful to VK and 15m has brought in Thailand and India.
The weather has been glorious today albeit still windy! We will end
up with more than 12000 QSO's in the log by the end of the operation
here.
We have hit most of our objectives including DXCC on all bands. We
have only missed DXCC ON 15m by 10 countries using SSB but this will
be added as an objective on the next dxpedition.
We travel home tomorrow morning and we will have very fond memories of
our time on Tiree

Eating Well

At this point can we take some time to give thanks to our two chefs Paddy and Mick! The guys have fed us each day, starting with the famous DX breakfast and finished each day off with a marvelous dinner. Ok, it's been late in the evening sometimes as the beer has flowed freely!



The famous honey glazed gammon!



All plated up, a real feast!

Stormy Thursday!

Today is exceptionally windy and wet. It doesn't start raining, it
just rains! One minute nothing and then completely wet.
We have had 2 issues crop up today. The rain static on 40m hits 20
over 9 at times and makes it impossible to hear anyone. The second
issue was between 10m on the FT2000 and 40m on the K3. When 10m keyed
on the Yaesu, it was 10 over 9 on 40m. This turned out to be phase
noise from the FT2000. Once we moved 10m to one of the K3's, the
problem completely disappeared. Brendan had been noticing the noise
floor rising on 30m when the Yaesu keyed up on 17m before any
modulation! Very poor show Yaesu!

We expect to hit our target of 10,000 Q's later today and we have had
some remarkable contacts including Afganistan, Reunion Island and
Mauritius. Runs to Indonesia and India have been common. Once we are
home and have had time to interrogate the logs I will post more of the
highlights






By the way, they call our hobby wireless?

Ian G0VGS

A Few Photos

Steve Operating the 80m station



Andrew and Brendan both dealing with pileups on SSB and CW




Paul on one of the five stations we have running!

Tuesday

A much slower day today with difficult conditions. Still managed to
work VK6 on 20m but the band noise is a killer :(. Paul just managed
to get Uganda for a new country on 15m but progress is slow. The WX is
better today after the strong winds overnight but we are promised
60mph winds for Thursday. We can only hope that the aerials can stand
it! So far they have. We have managed 5,500 contacts as of this afternoon. Everyone is having a wonderful time, even Hughie ( or is that Hugo)




Some of the team enjoying Mark and Paddy's DX Breakfast!

Ian G0VGS

Windy Monday

We woke up this morning to extremely strong winds and some minor
repairs were required to some of the verticals. This has been the
theme of the day really with plenty of wind and some rain. Currently
we think everything is as secure as we can make it and we have
totalled 3600 Q's so far. I have been taking plenty of video and I
will edit this on return and post it for viewing.

Here is a picture of the homemade tuning stubs we have been using.



Ian G0VGS

Hot Off the Press

One of the cottages seen through the 15m array



The view of our beach



Ian G0VGS

Sunday. First Full Day

An absolutely lovely day on the island today with full sun and very
little wind. We continue to put up aerials and Paul continues to make
stubs to counteract the ensuing interactions! :)
We now have all 5 stations working and the contacts are flying in!
Japan was easy this morning on 17m and DX is coming in all the time.
We have a 264 ft doublet which is proving superb on 40m at the moment.
The 4 element vertical phased end fire array on 15m is working really
well too. We are using a vertical Moxon rectangle on 20m right by the
water and a vertical for 30m. We also have a 2 element vertical phased
array for 10m which is also getting us contacts. The computer
networking is working wonderfully well and N1MM is brilliant as
always. Considering the amount of work done we should crack the 1500
QSO barrier today and if we can make it 2000, even better!
The weather is due to change tomorrow which is a shame as currently I
can think of no better place to be in the world at the moment. It is
absolutely perfect.


Ian G0VGS

Landed on Tiree

After a long journey up to Oban to catch the ferry we have just arrived on Tiree. The crossing was very calm and we had a good breakfast on board. Just disembarking now! It has rained overnight here but the weather is fine now.
Hope to start putting the antennas up as soon as we get to the cottages. With a bit of luck we will be on HF by late afternoon on a few bands at least!

Ian G0VGS