Dave M0TAZ expressed an interest in early September to take part in the 70 MHz Practical Wireless contest on the 28th of September.  A few emails here and there to rally the troops and come the 28th we had a ready gang of radio amateurs.

By the time George M1GEO and Chris G8OCV arrived, Arentas 2E0WUF, Peter G0IAP and Dave M0TAZ were in the process of setting up.

Here, Dave M0TAZ operates the 4 metres station using his homebrew 6 element Yagi and Icom IC7100.

While Dave M0TAZ was operating on 70 MHz, George M1GEO, Chris G8OCV and Peter G0IAP did some operating on 40 metres, and worked 81 stations during the operation on Sunday afternoon.  The station was pretty al fresco, with the radio stacked on some boxes and the operators chair being an old toolbox.

This weekend Dave M0TAZ took part in the 144 MHz trophy contest as well as a few HF stations in the RSGB HF SSB Field day from the Bunker site. He kindly provided this report.

The contest attracts activity from all over Europe, and on Sunday it also coincides with the low power back packer series. The contest has a number of categories from 24 hours to 6 hours. Dave M0TAZ decided to opt for a casual entry on Saturday only, operating for just under 4 Hrs. The contest was very busy, with a lot of high power multi-antenna UK stations with exceptional signals.

Using a Icom IC-7100 with 50w and a 12m mast supporting a 9-element tonna, Dave was able to work 41 stations.

Some DX highlights for the day was

DL0GTH in JN50 @741 KM.
DA0FF in JN40 @ 688 KM
DL0GM in JO31 @520 KM

You can view the claimed scores here: http://www.rsgbcc.org/cgi-bin/claim.pl?Contest=144MHz%20Trophy&year=2014

On Sunday, Dave decided to work a few HF stations, the RSGB SSB Field day continued
until 2PM local, so set up a simple station using 100w from the Icom into a doublet antenna 20m per leg fed with 300 Ohm ribbon cable.

With the able assistance of Fred G3SVK we worked 35 stations quickly before getting sidetracked by some JA stations calling on 21 MHz.

After a few calls I was able to work:

JA7NVF
JA1OGI
JM1PLN

I also operated on 5 MHz and was able to work Mal G3KEV/p in Scarborough and Peter G4LNA in Hertfordshire.

A map showing the QSO completed on 144 MHz is available here:  https://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.rsgbcc.org/vhf/kml_files/2014/ONatUP7C7ck9GURxR8dAElXIfGezADV

Dave M0TAZ