Last Of The Summer Wine Beach Party

Thursday 22nd of July was a memorable evening when a small group took the opportunity to make their way to Middleton Sands and have a beach party. We met at Hughies around 6.30pm with Dave, Ben and Hughie travelling in one car with Brian following in his own. The weather was perfect a nice sunny evening with a light breeze. Here we can see Hughie G4UME operating at the start of the evening.

Those in attendance for the evening were Dave 2E0DTG, Hughie G4UME,Ben 2E0WTL, Brian G0RDH Heres a short video of Ben 2E0WTL operating under his own callsign.

Ben managed to break a pileup to Brazil on 20m which was quite something. The equipment was all setup with around 15 minutes and consisted of a Kenwood TS-480SAT, although a few years old now this radio works great for mobile and special events. The TS-480SAT as far as I know is still in production and readily available on the used market.

We used 2 antenna, Dave made a homebrew 20m veritcal that was mounted on a screw in ground spike and fibreglass pole with 4 groundplanes (Dave tells me it has now been increased to 6 groundplanes). The antenna worked very well. The second antenna was purchaced by the group a few months ago, we thought it would be great for portable use and for special events like those documented in the blogs from Heron Corn Mill. The antenna was also thought to be excellent because of its ease of assembly and small footprint (taking around 15 minutes to assemble....we took our time) compared to other antennas the group currently owns, which are great to use from our base at Oysterber Farm where we have access to pleny of private ground to experiment. The antenna is a G4YKB Inverted Delta Loop covering 40m thru 4m made in Bolton by G4YKB Ham Radio Solutions. The antenna tuned on all bands via the internal ATU within around 2 seconds on all the bands it covered. Hughie was a little worried when we first tried the antenna because it wouldn't tune, this was found to be because there was a fault with the coaxial feed, all was well after it was replaced with some RG58 Mil Spec coaxial cable. The Inverted Delta loop was mounted on top of a a 2 part swaged alluminium mast around 11ft in length the fibreglass poles once extended gave an overall height of around 22ft.

The bottom picture is a balun with an so239... I would have preferred the so239 to have been mounted at the bottom of the case to reduce stress and make it more waterproof. One of the group members suggested feeding the coax over to the top of the perspex to relieve stress on the so239.

Both antenna worked well with very little difference between them signal wise although it was noted that there was less noise on the inverted delta loop in line with what the manufacturer claimed.

Ben 2E0WTL at the end of the evening on 20m running the group callsign MX0SCG/P. He did really well over the course of the evening making many contacts.

Pictured here is Dave 2E0DTG enjoying a break at the end of the evening.

And in the best traditions of the Two Ronnies heres an "And Finally" Hughie and Dave paid a second visit to Middleton Sands on Monday 2nd August and joined the "Owls Nest Net" Dave called in before I started the net Telling James M3APO that according to his watch it was 7.30pm and I was late...His watch was 4 Mins fast.... Dave could do with an updated watch, his is a classic:-)

Hope you have enjoyed the Blog.... Best 73 Brian G0RDH