Last night saw activation for the 160 metre club calls affiliated societies contest. This is a slow and relaxed contest, with an emphasis on beginners (full rules here).

3 members of the group decided to run the contest from the bunker as there is already an antenna suitable for 1.8 MHz on site. We carefully negotiated the car on to the field (in heavy rain), with the wheels slipping everywhere. As some of you may remember, we have had vehicles stuck in the field before, so it was our concern at 8pm at night with the farmer long since resting at home, that we mustn’t become stuck!

The field was boggy, but we managed to get close enough to run a coax to the mast, and set the station up on the car dashboard. Given we didn’t know the state of the antenna, we took a large ATU with enough inductance should it be needed, with the intention of running a long wire if the doublet had failed. The Icom IC7100 was used to provide the maximum 32W for the section of 160m in concern. Power was provided by a Honda EU20i silent generator. We also opted for a small fan-heater to keep the car warm and small table-lamp to provide light. Fortunately the doublet was okay, and we got underway.

Here we see Dave G7UVW operating the IC7100 through a rain-covered window.

Conditions were very down on last year’s event. The band was cursed with environmental noise. It also didn’t help that we had a dodgy piece of feeder coax, which was undiscovered until the last 15 minutes.

Overall, we worked 34 stations, and claimed a score of 564.