G0HRS/A. The Blog by G0PDZ (with contributions by the team).
M0LMK, Matt
M5PGC, Phil
G4BSW, Nigel
2E0KSB, Steve
G0PDZ, Ian
W00F!, Maddie
This blog details a mini dx-pedition by members of the Hilderstone Radio Society to Devon as a short radio holiday to give the club callsign a good airing! An additional benefit was shortly beforehand it was announced we had been awarded the title of RSGB National Club of the Year for 2018, so we had a great opportunity to brag!
Friday 15th November 2019.
Today was travel day. Matt, M0LMK, collected Ian, G0PDZ (as well as Maddie, the dog) & Nigel, G4BSW starting at 07.45am. With a very full car we were on the road out of Margate by 08.20am. Immediate contact was made with Phil, M5PGC & Steve, 2E0KSB using GB3EK who were already making progress out of Thanet via Manston.
Communications were moved over to SU22 for the rest of the journey. A quick stop at Medway Services for coffee for the ops & comfort stop for Maddie, it was the first break in the journey for the M0LMK group whilst M5PGC carried on via the M20. Both vehicles met up for the first time at Clackets Lane services on the M25 to travel together in convoy on an agreed route.
Lunch stop was made at an American style Diner just beyond Stonehenge, with all five enjoying a full English breakfast. Whilst Maddie guarded the vehicles Matt & Ian were strictly told that an American Diner did not justify use of their US callsigns!
Steady progress was made down to the West Country arriving at Pattards Farm at 5pm meaning that the last of the light was fast disappearing. We were met & greeted by our host Tim. Rooms were chosen; personal kit dumped for later attention & the three Kenwood TS590SG stations were set up ready to be fitted with antennas on Saturday.
A quick trip to the local supermarket by Matt, Phil & Steve, followed by a stop at the nearest Fish & Chip shop, this required a visit to the next county, Cornwall, all of 15 minutes drive further on!
The super keen amongst us, or impatient, Nigel used this time to sneak out his portable end fed half antenna, drape it over the rafters of the lounge & proceeded to rattle off the first contacts of the DX-pedition using the paddles.
The Fish & Chip supper was well appreciated by all & as it was consumed the plan for the erection of the antenna farm was made based on the quick reconnaissance we had made earlier before the light was lost.
As the clock ran towards 11pm the team drifted off to their beds to recover for the next day.
Saturday 16th November 2019.
All the members emerged from their very comfortable billets shortly after 7am. After a quick tea or coffee, the party moved out into the field behind the cottage. The first antenna erected was the end fed for 80m through 10m. This was installed as an inverted L using a guyed 12m DX wire telescopic pole but only using the lower 7m. The far end of the L was supported by a line passed over the branches of a tree on the edge of the field. Matt, our expert ‘arboreal tosser’. The first attempt was a little too energetic, the throw bag sailed over the desired tree & the one behind it with the line carefully wrapping itself around a branch, holding on with a ‘death grip’. A session on tugging, twanging & jerking ensued after which the throw bag released itself to it to be lowered towards the ground. It was at this point that it was realised that the edge of the field was also the edge of the land. The ground quickly fell away towards the river valley below, but the dense undergrowth & trees hid the precipice. The bag was just within safe reach so was recovered ready for a second attempt. The second attempt was far more restrained in effort & sailed over the chosen limb making a quick connection for the halyard a simple task. Antenna no1 successfully deployed, giving a mix of vertical & horizontal radiation.
We had a visit from our host, our antenna construction had not gone unnoticed & he had been notified of our activities. He knew that we were building antennas but came along to see for himself. He left expressing fascination with our hobby & amazement of what we could achieve with our bits of wire.
Second antenna was the deployment of the ZS6BKW, this is a development of the ubiquitous G5RV being a doublet fed with ladder line of slightly different configuration. One end supported by a halyard attached to the cottage the centre supported by a 12m telescopic Spiderpole, again using only about 7m. the far end being supported by a 7m Sotabeams tactical telescopic pole. This giving horizontal radiation, mainly NVIS due to its height.
A break for breakfast, was then taken (sausage baps, thanks Nigel) & much appreciated. The third & final antenna (for the moment) was the DX Commander ABV, but this had to be constructed from its components extracted from its shipping case. After much reference to the online construction guide (G0PDZ having forgotten to pack his printed copy) as well as quick viewing of the various YouTube videos it was all figured out, constructed & installed in its testing configuration ready to be fine-tuned & finished later. The initial test was extremely disappointing, no resonance anywhere useful & very poor VSWR readings. A quick test back at the antenna base revealed all was well, checking the first length of feeder quickly identified the culprit. This coax recovered from the club cupboard visually appeared good but was obviously hiding severe issues. Scrap value was an overestimate of its price. The replacement coax showed we had a working antenna useable on all its bands, 40m-6m, apart from 12m (a nick in the sheath of the wire had been noted during build but appeared to be only minor cosmetic damage, obviously deceptive.)
Again, we were losing the light & all retreated into the cottage to start fine tuning & using the stations. Somehow Nigel managed to both cook a very tasty supper & work the world using a combination of CW & FT8.
By late evening the first hundred contacts had been logged, after only four had been logged the previous evening.
Before it became Sunday your author decided to turn in leaving Nigel, Matt & Steve still working the radios or making devices to adapt the Inverted L to work on Top Band.
Sunday 17th November 2019.
Sunday morning saw M0LMK as the first to emerge into the shack, soon followed by G0PDZ & then the others. Soon all three stations were in use & a steady stream of contacts were being made. After breakfast an antenna party was formed to make a slight change to the end-fed half wave. It was lengthened slightly & the vertical portion pulled away from the pole to open its angle at the top where the bend from vertical to horizontal was made. An improvement in VSWR & shift in resonance was noted.
In mid-afternoon G0PDZ took command of the 80m end fed to participate in the monthly sked of his old & now defunct club. The Clifton Country club is an online gathering of former members maintaining a link between them, as we have all moved away from our South East London base. Sadly, this may have been the very last on air gathering. Due to age, infirmity, members no longer having access to radios having moved into reduced accommodation & a quickly reducing number of members due to SK’s has reduced the net to only a couple of callers each month.
As the afternoon drew to a close the adapted end fed was pressed into action on 160m with some success, but with a ‘local’ gap. 2E0KSB having great fun engaging with some old friends.
G4BSW, ‘THE MACHINE’ ploughed on all day on the key working the world & adding considerably to the total number of contacts.
M5PGC, spent a considerable time using FT8 again working some DX unavailable even to CW.
By late evening we were well on our way towards four hundred contacts in the log.
It has been very informative & educational to all to occasionally stop transmitting & compare the received signals using different antennas on identical radios. Stations not heard on one horizontal antenna, received very weak on another horizontal but perfectly readable on the vertical or the other way around. Likewise, it was interesting to note how propagation was perceived by different antennas. On 40m at one stage the vertical was hearing stations in the US, Australia as well as Europe (pity they were all contest stations not interested in us!) but the horizontal antennas only were hearing the European stations. It has also been a great pleasure to hear & work stations only showing as S3 on the meter as at home the noise floor routinely would mask them.
Monday 18th November 2019.
Conditions on the bands seemed to be a little lacklustre, meaning SSB contacts were not as frequent as would be desired, but some good rag chews were held. CW & FT8 kept the contact rate up. Not much to report as we just operated, chatted & conspired over future plans.
We’d already experimented with 160m the previous night when Matt suggested removing the transformer from the end-fed half-wave and tuning it up in the radio. It worked a treat, with strong signals into Jersey and Scotland. But… Steve was trying to call an old friend in Cambridge, and we were barely readable to him – the shallower take-off angle of the end-fed was causing us to skip right over his head. We needed something a bit more NVIS for what in top band terms is “local”.
Many top band operators Steve knows use an end-fed wire with some added capacitance malarkey and a bunch of counterpoise underneath, but almost everyone we spoke to said the same thing: if you’ve got the room for a dipole, put up a dipole. If it’s low-slung (that’s 40-60ft for the 160m band) it’ll propagate straight up and give you better local coverage (that’s a few to several hundred miles at 160m).
So, we endeavoured to construct a full-sized (almost 80m) top band dipole. Matt had a 40m dipole which we extended using a spare reel of wire that Steve had brought. We attached the additional lengths at the convenient anchor points on the ends of the 20m dipole, and slung the whole thing between two trees at the top and bottom of the field (thanks once again to Matt’s superlative arboreal tossing skills). Although we’d been told that 40-60ft elevation would be ideal, we didn’t have anything that would take it that up that far, so we went as high in the trees as we could and used a 10m push-up pole to raise the centre.
The feed point was a fair way down the field, and the whole thing was nearly scuppered when we discovered the feeder we’d brought along from the club was ‘pining for the fjords’. Almost game over, but Phil saved the day by delving into the camper van and producing a decent length of nice-quality cable that reached up as far as the base of the end-fed half-wave. Thus, we could switch between the end-fed and the 160m dipole with a brief trudge across the top of the field (Steve thanks Phil for the wellies).
Bingo. We still got our favourable reports in the extremities but were now being heard nicely in England too. Steve worked a number of stations on SSB and received several compliments on our station. The antenna was also used by Nigel, who enjoyed the opportunity to work some top band CW contacts. Also 34 FT8 contacts were also made on 160. For many people, getting on 160m is a tough call, as antennas that fit in gardens have to be pretty exotic. So it was amazing to have enough space to build a really simple antenna that works really well on the band.
Tuesday 19th November 2019.
Whilst Matt, Nigel & Ian started operating for the morning, Steve got busy on Phil’s laptop, he was being let down by a creaky and probably infected version of Windows, so Steve gave him a fresh install of Windows 10 plus WSJT-X, Fldigi and some associated utilities, the most important of which being Meinberg, a friendly utility which keeps the computer’s clock accurate enough for FT-8 et al. Steve & Phil then spent some time getting the radio’s USB interface to talk nicely with the digi software (both for CAT control and audio) and finally configuring the digital mode software with his station details. Phil was able to work a number of contacts on FT-8 which means he’ll be good to go when he sets it up at home.
After lunch we agreed on the removal of antennas starting at 2:30pm whilst it was light & dry (heavy rain was forecast overnight & into the morning). The first was the End fed for 80m, then the ZS6BKW, these were the most complex. They came down & were packed up without incident. It was originally intended to leave the top band dipole up, but overnight its support had come adrift so was also taken down. The DX Commander was left up. A simply deployed Sotabeams linked dipole was put up by Steve for some last-minute experiments using Phils newly restored set up. All concluded as planned before dark & the forecast rain.
We all walked down to the Kings Head in the village of Pattard for a meal & some beer, in the dark & light rain. The walk certainly built the appetite, but really that wasn’t needed as the food was delicious, well presented, appetising & reasonably priced. The walk back also took care of the extra unplanned pint or two consumed! Of note was that the pub is publicised as dog friendly, so Maddie accompanied us & good she did otherwise we would have been the only patrons not to have at least one dog in tow. After initial greeting barks & growls all were behaved, including the dogs!
Wednesday 20th November 2019.
It was a blowy night with notable rainfall (no link to the pub food & beer), as I woke at 6:30am I was pleased to see the DX Commander still standing, but it was bending quite dramatically in the gusts. However, by 7:20am it was on its side. One of the lightweight short pegs holding the guys had finally been dragged from the ground. Looking at the gash in the ground the peg had been dragged through the earth before finally pulling out, it tried its best to stay up. I’m very impressed with this antenna system, lightweight & a great performer, supported by only three short guys (Three additional upper guys would have kept it vertical for sure) No damage was caused & pleased we had removed most of the other antennas the previous afternoon.
Final packing up of the stations was carried out the car & motorhome were packed up, the cottage cleaned up & furniture returned to their original positions with a note left in the visitor book. An entry which is sure to confuse & intrigue non amateurs in the future.
The drive home commenced around 10am meaning a two-hour trip to again stop at our American Diner for brunch. When fortified we continued home making good progress until the inevitable congestion on the M25 arriving back in Thanet in the dark.
Stats.
Total = 705 QSO
CW = 287 QSO
SSB = 125 QSO
FT8 = 295 QSO
SSTV = 2 QSO
All in all we achieved our purpose of getting the club call sign out on the air giving us a great opportunity to tell everyone we were 2018 RSGB National Club of the Year winners. OK, it was a bragging opportunity but it generated some good conversations, with operators stating they would be pushing their club members to engage in more club activities with an intention to push us off our pedestal.
Logging.
We had discussed logging options prior to the trip and decided upon Log4OM as our logging solution as members had plenty of experience using it and it had some very exciting options for sharing a single database while logging on several active stations simultaneously.
Steve and Matt ran some tests before the trip to check the theory, simulating setups based on both a locally-hosted database (on a PC on the same network as all the workstations) and a cloud-hosted database. Both tested fine so we had options for the live installation, depending on how the internet at Pattards was configured.
The “Guest Wifi” at Pattards Granary proved adequate for most of our needs, but it was slow and vulnerable to outages. Individual connections to it were isolated from each other for security, which meant we’d have to use a cloud-hosted database, but the regular internet outages were causing Log4OM to lose its database connection. Phil saved the day with a “4G” mobile hotspot from EE, which gave us a fast, reliable connection with proper local networking. We connected our workstations to this and the new locally-hosted database.
Each HF station had its own PC workstation running Log4OM, where each operator would sign in under his own callsign when taking over control of that station. All previous logs entries were visible at all workstations, which meant every operator was able to see where each other was working. Each logged contact was also sent to qrz.com in real time.
To make things easier, we intend to build a Raspberry Pi-based solution which will provide connection to 4G, create a local wifi network and also host the SQL database for the logging software, giving us a portable plug-in-and-play “network box” for future outings.
Hardware.
3x Kenwood TS 590SG
1x Elecraft KPA500
1x Icom IC9700
1x Icom IC7100
Various laptops for logging & datamodes
Band pass filters for main HF bands
Various lengths of feeder
Antennas.
80m end fed 80m – 10m (adaptable as ¼ wave on Top Band)
ZS6BKW 80m – 10m
DX Commander 40m – 6m (will be adapted to add 80m)
Top Band Dipole 160m (adapted from 40m dipole)
Linked dipole 40m, 15m, 12m, 10m
Flowerpot 2m
V/UHF log periodic 2m-70cm (Satellite antenna, not used)
G0PDZ Comment.
Thanks go to my fellow DX-peditioners for being such great company. This was a fun few days away playing radio, experimenting with antennas guilt free, not having feeling that I should be doing something else, or suddenly needed elsewhere. But it was the company, with the conversations on radio topics & not, with getting to know club colleagues far better by our extended time together that was the best.
On circulating an initial draft of this blog, I was chastised for not mentioning the catering. I admit this was a massive oversight on my behalf. Nigel, set the bar high on Saturday evening with his ‘stuffed Jacket potatoes’, a title which does no justice to the culinary delight that they were. Phil produced a magnificent slow cooked goulash, the aroma teased us all day long. It was so so good & plentiful it provided an extra bowlful for the following lunchtime, eagerly devoured both times. Matt proved to us why guests at the Devonhurst return time after time, with his magnificent full English breakfast (well ‘Brunch’ for us). But, he proved why they would be even more successful if they provided evening meals as well, his cottage pie was scrumptious.
And what of your author, I’m ashamed to say I did not cook, (others may say, good job too!) But I did my part with plenty of washing up duty, keeping the kettle topped up & on the boil each day for plenty of brews. Oh, & making sure that none of that glorious food went to waste, if any was left over after first serving!
The three Kenwood TS590SG radios performed flawlessly. They proved their worth operating in close proximity with very little interference with each other. In fact, on one occasion I looked across to see Nigel working the bottom of the 40m band on CW whilst I was towards the top end working SSB, neither of us were aware of each other nor were we using band pass filters. Additionally, neither of us were being disturbed by Matt running 400w on 20m at the same time. Great rigs.
The only real negative to take away from the event was our choice of using ‘/A’. Many DX stations were confused insisting on replying with ‘/P’ or questioning the suffix, it is obviously not widely used outside ‘G’ land. But we also had a fair few questions raised by UK stations who didn’t recognise the purpose of the suffix! It slowed down a few pileup contacts & has raised some QSL enquiries, therefore we will probably use GX0HRS in the future & update the QRZ page for each period of operation. We use G0HRS/P regularly for contesting & we have a regular location used for that purpose.
I thoroughly enjoyed our five nights away, a great experience, lots of learning, good company plenty of fun. In fact it was enjoyed so much we have booked a return visit for November 2020.
