Cockenzie & Port Seton

Amateur Radio Club Elements

Cockenzie & Port Seton

Amateur Radio Club is

affiliated to the Radio

Society of Great Britain

and holds the call signs

MM0CPS and GM2T which

are used for our special

event and contest entries.

The Club was formed by

Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ in

1984, to help the local

amateurs get to know each

other.

Far from being just a local

club we have members

regularly attending from

the Borders, Dumfries,

Strathclyde, Fife and

Newcastle.

The Club meets on the first

Friday of every month

(Second Friday of January)

in the lounge of the

Thorntree Inn on the old

Cockenzie High Street from

7pm till late.

Editorial This month I am writing the editorial and my newsletter input early and this is due to oth-er commitments. It is hard to believe that soon we will be moving into the major holi-day period, isn’t time flying by.

Moving on to what has happened over the past month. On the training front, the re-sults are now in and 5 of the 6 candidates passed their Advanced exam, so congratula-tions to them all. I have put together dates for the 2011/2012 Training Program but the-se are with the Community Centre so I am awaiting their confirmation before I an-nounce them. I will publicise them via an email to all those on my distribution list, on the website and in the newsletter. (Hopefully they will make this newsletter but if not it should be in the July edition). On the club front we had our first DF night and I am sure it will have been another resounding success and hopefully will have a full report further in the newsletter. Thanks to Ron GM0NTL for donating the Hybszer Trophy in memory of Bill GM8ZLI/MM0BXK for this event.

We will have done our first “Demonstration Station” by putting on a radio station at the Port Seton Gala Day. It is early this year and the reason for that is the whole event is based on when there is a high tide due to the Sea-going Battle that takes place.

To the future, this month there is one im-portant change and that is the July Club Night will be one week early and will take place on Friday 24th June. The reason for the change is that our normal first Friday of the month clashes with VHF Field Day which

many of the club members will be taking part.

So, what else is happening well we are now starting to enter the main contest season for the club of which we will be entering a few. They are the 6M Trophy, PW QRP.

This month we also have on the 18th & 19th the “Museums on the Air” weekend again from the Museum of Flight, East Fortune. We will be operating from our normal hang-er up beside the Vulcan bomber.

These demonstration stations offer everyone to have a real go at HF operating using a tremendous HF set up so I hope you will take the opportunity to come along and give it a try.

Last but not least is our own 20M Activity Night on the 22nd June. It is an Activity night in the hope that many will take part. It is all for a bit of fun and an opportunity to see what can be worked. It is not a serious event but just an excuse to go out for a few hours on a Wednesday evening to “play at HF Ra-dio”. If you can’t get out then why not go on the air from home as a single operator and see what you can work. So please do not dismiss the idea about not doing it, go on and try and participate. I am interested in what people do work so any chance you could send me your logs and I will try and do a small write up on what was achieved. So can I please have a copy of your log by the 4th July at the latest?

A busy month then all rounds so I hope you can take part in all the events.

(Continued on page 2)

In this issue

CPSARC ACTIVITY NIGHT P.2

MINI RALLY REMINDER P.3

MAY DF NIGHT P.4

TRAINING SUMMARY P.6

CLUB ATTENDANCE P7

PSK31 CORNER P.8

GZ7V EXPEDITION P.10

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE P.13

EVENT COLUMN P.14

V o l u m e 1 9

Ju n e 2 0 11

06

This month certainly has a lot of operating activities so there is something there for everyone. Some of the events will certain-ly give you an opportunity to practice some of the skills re-quired to go contesting so why not take time out and give it a try. Events like Museums on the Air although are demonstra-tion set-ups can at the same time be extremely hectic. What they offer is the ability to use some of logging programs and learn all about them, and also how to handle a pile up like we have experienced over the last few events we have run at the Museum of Flight. It is better to play at these events rather than try and learn when you are involved in a major contest.

The opportunity is there so why not use it.

That’s it then for me this month, I hope you will take part in all of the events; it would be tremendous to see.

Enjoy the newsletter.

Bob GM4UYZ

(Continued from page 1)

CPSARC SSB/CW/DATA ACTIVITY NIGHT

For a few years we tried running our own small contest on the nearest Wednesday to mid-summer’s day. We started at first using 10M but as the sunspot cycle started to decline it was moved to the current 20M band. Over the years it was not really well supported. Many of the comments that came back after the event are, “it is a “Contest” why not make it an Activ-ity Night”.

To that end it changed to just that an Activity Night.

The aim of the event is to get on the air and work as many stations that you can in the allotted time period plus at the same time have some fun. We are Radio Amateurs after all and we are supposed to get on the air and make contacts so come on then let me see you doing it.

After the event can you send me a copy of your log so that I can write up some report on what you all managed to achieve plus why not update the club tables and send Bob GM4IKT an entry for that. I know he would be most grateful for it.

Look forward to a massive turnout for the event…

Bob GM4UYZ

(1) Date 22nd June 2011

(2) Time 19:00 to 22:00 Local Time

(3) Modes SSB / CW/ Data

(4) Power As per your licence Full=400W, Intermediate=50W and Foundation=10W

(5) Eligible Entrants Open to any one who wishes to take part

(6) Exchange Report (RST)

(7) Closing Date Closing Date for the Logs is Friday, 4th July 2010

(8) Return Logs to Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ, 7 Castle Terrace, Port Seton, Prestonpans, East Lothian, EH32 0EE

Email gm4uyz@cpsarc.com

18th ANNUAL

MINI RALLY/JUNK NIGHT FRIDAY 12th AUGUST 2011

Bring along your own junk or unwanted equipment

and sell it yourself. Tables on a First Come,

First Served Basis

Time: 1830 till 2200

Location: Cockenzie & Port Seton Community

Centre (Main Hall) Disabled access available

Entry: £2 ALL PERSONS

Raffle drawn at 21:00, Food & Drink Available

If anyone would like to donate any prizes for the raffle

or food towards the catering it will be greatly

appreciated.

Short Sailing

Trip—want to

come?

Planned crew for a short trip west has had to pull out, so I’m looking for anyone else who wants to come.

Leaving Sat 25th June from Rhu (near

Helensburgh), to Ardrishaig, through the Crinan Canal to Crinan,

then north to Dunstaffnage (near Oban). Leaving the boat there, a train ride back to Helensburgh on Monday 27th June.

A sailing / motoring trip across country in one of

Scotland's most scenic canals and some interesting sailing either side of the canal. There might be time for some radio on the way too. (/maritime mobile

at sea, but I think it's /mobile while on an inland waterway?) If you're interested, please get in contact soon so that the crew

can be decided.

Geoff MM5AHO geoff.crowley @btinternet.com

Club Attire

The club has a design for

Club Tee-shirts, Polo-

shirts, Sweat-Shirts,

Fleeces and Jackets and all

of these can be obtained

from the address below.

When making an order

please quote ‘Cockenzie &

Port Seton Amateur Radio

Club’ as this will ensure

that the Club Logo will be

placed on the required

ordered garments.

If you wish to add your call

-sign to the logo then

please ask at the time of

the order.

Cost will depend on

garment and should cover

the garment and logo, call-

sign addition will be extra.

Order from:

PATRICIA BEWSEY DESIGNS,

UNIT 11,

FENTON BARNS RETAIL

VILLAGE,

FENTON BARNS,

NORTH BERWICK,

EAST LOTHIAN

EH39 5BW

Tel/Fax: 01620 850788

Mobile: 07970 920431

MAY DF NIGHT

Friday 13thMay

It wasn’t until the morning of the DF Night that I suddenly realised that the date I had picked for the night was a “Friday 13th”, would this be a bad sign.....glad to say it was-n’t. Once again we were fortunate with the weather during the DF Night; it basically was excellent weather otherwise nice and dry. To be honest I was worried that we would be caught in the showers that had been occur-ring throughout the day but thank goodness they all disappeared. So were there any dis-asters or stories to tell…read on.

As normal everyone who took part assem-bled in the Ship Inn car park ready to go at the 19:00 start. This time there were 4 cars that set out so the teams consisted off: Liz 2M1GLD & Ricky GM1PLY, Paul 2M0BUY & Robin MM0VTV, Bob GM4IKT & Nick MM0NJC and Robbie MM3RBC and me giv-ing us a small turnout, could have done with more cars to increase the fun so maybe in September. . The fox this time was Cambell MM0DXC.

Information from the fox this year on what he was running is as follows:

Radio FT100 running approximately 500mW into a ¼ wave mag-mount attached upside down inside his van, definitely a unique set-up. To save the voice and to give the accu-rate 30sec announcement an MFJ434b Voice Recorder and a Satellite Clock to give an ac-curate time to transmit.

What was at stake this year, well it was to win the “HYBSZER TROPHY” which has been donated by Ron GM0NTL in memory of the late Bill Gordon MM0BXK/GM8ZLI who died in January 2010. It is an amazing gesture in memory of a great man sadly missed by us all. Why donate the trophy at this event, well it was the one event in our Club’s Calendar that Bill loved so therefore a worthy cause.

The seven o’clock start came and off we all went. My team we headed up to Spittal, which lies just to the east of Longniddry. Nothing was heard so we headed up to the

(Continued on page 5)

Garlton Monument and again nothing heard. The thoughts were now that the fox must be to the south of the Garleton hill so off we went across the hill towards Haddington. We listened once again but again no signal. Where will we go was the next question when Robbie mentioned about Prestonpans. I said it wasn’t on the map but he replied well yes it was. It made me think that in all the years nobody had ever gone to the west of Port Seton and knowing how devious Cambell is it made sense he would do something like that. Of we went and as we were at the Dolphinton slip road we heard Cambell and that was with the aerial lying in the back of the car. So now we knew he was in that vicinity... Thinking still that he might be at the Prestongrange mining museum we headed in that direc-tion. We stopped before we got there and at last our first bearing. It pointed us up towards the Tranent area... he could-n’t be at his house could he as it is on the map? Anyway we went to Prestonpans Railway station and took our next bear-ing... Tranent it is then... To kill the curiosity we headed to Cambell’s house but no Cambell, the van was missing so an-other clue for us plus we also took a bearing but nothing heard. We headed back to Birsley Brae and took another bear-ing from there. What a signal so we knew he was close so it was all about looking at the map to see where he could be. Decision made, we took a back road and took our next read-ing...whilst I was doing that Robbie scooted off and shouted I

have found him.... Yes for the team

How did the rest fare... well nobody else was successful

Do we have a story this year; well the answer this year is no...

The DF finished and as we headed off I politely asked a young lady if she would take a photo of Robbie and me with the “HYBSZER TROPHY”.... Robbie obviously cannot go to the Thorntree Inn so that was the reason I did it. Robbie was so proud of winning the DF I have given him the “HYBSZER TRO-PHY” to keep for the six months, otherwise the September DF Night. Seeing his reaction makes the event so worthwhile... the searching, the winning and the pleasure of accepting the Trophy.

Well done Cambell you certainly made it a very entertaining evening so on behalf of us all a massive thank you.….

Now who said DF’ing was easy, but once again it proved that it isn’t particularly when you only get a transmission for less than a minute, every 5 minutes. Everyone certainly enjoyed the evening and wants more, well they will have to wait till September when the next one takes place, and in the dark as well. Yes another test! Roll on September!!!!!!!!

Bob GM4UYZ

(Continued from page 4)

Club Night for July has been moved forward by one week to Friday 24th June. The reason being is that one of the club’s major contest activities takes part on the first weekend end of July and that is VHF Field Day. Quite a number of the club members will be taking part in this event and will be travelling to site and then building the contest station on the Friday that would normally be club night.

Over the years we used to use a site which was local and we would then go to the site early on the Saturday morning but two things have happened, one we have lost use of this old site as the new farmer/owner has ensured no one can access the area even though we had written to him to get the same permission as the previous farmer had given us (still no reply from him even though a stamp addressed envelope was in-cluded!!!) and secondly we have moved to a better site locat-ed down near Castle Douglas, Dumfries which means that we have to travel a day earlier. If you wish to join us for VHF Field Day, and all are welcome then get in touch with John MM0CCC mm0ccc@cpsarc.com

See you all a week earlier on the 24th June……

*Note this also means that the deadline for articles for the next newsletter has also moved forward a week to 18 June so re-member to get your material in early!

Send articles to mm0jxi@cpsarc.com +

CHANGE OF JULY CLUB NIGHT

TRAINING SUMMARY 2010/2011 The Club

The Club is run in a very

informal way, just a group

of like minded people

doing something they

enjoy!

This does not mean that

we don’t do anything, we

enter (and win!) contests,

train newcomers, hold

talks and video nights and

run a popular annual Junk

Sale. Our newsletter has

won the Practical Wireless

‘Spotlight’ competition on

several occasions.

The Club supports the

British Heart Foundation in

memory of a member who

died from heart disease by

donating the profits from

some of the events we

hold, we have raised over

£14,795 since 1994.

Supported by

BT Community Champions

Another successful training program has once again been run by the club. The training pro-gram covered a total of 23 Saturdays so it is a massive commitment and by the time I get to the end I am in desperate need of a rest and I am sure you can see why. One thing I will say that no money is taken by any of us as the fees just cover the costs of running the courses. I have had it said that we must be making loads of money out of the training, if that was true we would be a rich men. It is done by us all as a way of putting something back into this great hobby of ours. This year at the January Intermediate Exam day we received an RCF inspection and we passed with flying colours. Someone acting on the RCF’s behalf will turn up and check that we are following all the correct exam procedures. I am proud to say that our exam procedures are carried out to the letter so no worries on that front. To the training team: My sincere thanks to Cambell MM0DXC for his role as being the “Head Invigilator” and for the continual sup-port he gives me throughout the year, it is real-ly much appreciated. Thanks also goes out to Gary MM0FZV who helps Cambell during the exam invigilating and lastly to Tom GM4LRU for his continual support in doing the Founda-tion On-Air practical. At the end of the day we all work well as a team. So how did we fair? Foundation Course We ran three Foundation Courses, only two had been originally planned, but after a bit of misunderstanding on the second course I de-cided to run another one. Number of Candidates: 15 Number of Passes: 15 Pass Rate: 100% Intermediate Course We ran two Intermediate Courses Number of Candidates: 13 Includes 1 re-sit Number of Passes: 11 1 Failed then re-sat and passed, & 1 Failed Pass Rate: 84%

Advanced Course We ran a total of one Advanced Courses Number of Candidates: 7 1 pulled out early due to work commitments so 6 sat exam Number of Passes: 5 1 Failed Pass Rate: 84% It also has to be remembered as one progress-es through the courses they get steadily hard-er. The biggest jump is from Intermediate to Advanced. When it comes to the Advanced Exam it is not just about the Saturday classes as it is so important that that the candidates study, study and do even more studying. If they don’t they will certainly struggle with the exam as it is something that really stands out with the results. Overall I am extremely pleased with the excel-lent results. The 2011/2012 Dates have been put together but as I write this article I am awaiting confir-mation from the Community Centre that the dates are all ok. Hopefully they are as it has been a real fiddle to get in the amount of train-ing I want to cover. Any way once everything is confirmed I will announce the program via an email to all that are on my distribution list, the club website and the newsletter. If you know of anyone interested in any of the courses get them to email me and I can add them to my future list.... Bob GM4UYZ

For many of you the jest I get on a club night “here he is again giving us a tick in the register”, to the newcomers you may wonder why I do it, ok I am sad but I know that.

Basically it all started as I was just interested on who had come to a club night plus I do keep a record of all what goes on within the club in files at the local library as part of the town’s Local History. Like all statistics lots of things can be read into them so I suppose in reality you take out of them what you want.

With regard to club members well you became one the mi-nute you walked in the door on an official club night, easy isn’t it?

When I look back over my whole list of people who have actu-ally came through the door, 239 in total since I started keep-ing the “tick“ sheet, it is interesting to note them all.

Some people only came once some come a few times and others have come more or less every club night. Some of the old regulars have moved away and can’t attend, some are totally constrained by a change in their working lives and sad-ly, some are no longer with us.

Yes, maybe I am sad but I can just about remember each and everyone. My dream for a club night is for everyone who has been to actually turn up, now that would be a night.

Another dream is much on the same line but to hold a huge “convention” for the lack of a better word, with guest speak-ers, stalls, etc, etc, now this is just not a dream but a nigh on impossibility, any way there you go.

The table 1 below is all about the number of times that peo-ple have attended a club night since November 1992.

Since then up until the May 2011 club night it is a total of 223 club nights. You have to remember that people have started coming to the club as recent as May past or as long as since I started making notes so in essence the table can look a little skewed. Still makes interesting reading though.

The other Table 2 is to show how many different people visit-ed the club that year. Basically everyone starts a fresh each year so it just show for example in 2003 62 different people—amateurs/SWL’s/friends came through the doors on a club night.

CLUB ATTENDANCE SINCE 1992

No. of Club

No. of People who have

YEAR No. of People

0 – 9 155 1992 33

10 – 19 28 1993 62

20 – 29 14 1994 53

30 – 39 5 1995 62

40 – 49 4 1996 61

50 – 59 5 1997 74

60 – 69 5 1998 63

70 – 79 4 1999 61

80 – 89 3 2000 53

90 – 99 3 2001 46

100 – 109 1 2002 45

110 – 119 2 2003 62

120 – 129 0 2004 53

130 – 139 2 2005 46

140 – 149 3 2006 50

150 – 159 0 2007 41

160 – 169 2 2008 28

170 --179 1 2009 44

180 -- 189 1 2010 42

190 -- 199 0 2011 30

200 -- 209 0

210 -- 219 1

220 -- 229 0

230 -- 239 0

Thanks to the sterling

work by M0RNR, our club

has been added to the

excellent Clublog system

developed by Michael

Wells G7VJR.

www.clublog.org

The system allows mem-

bers to upload their logs

in ADIF format and have

them displayed in a table

with all the other club

members.

Clublog also has great

facilities for tracking your

DXCC status etc so is well

worth taking the time to

register and get your log

uploaded.

To update your log with

the next set of contacts

you can simply upload

your whole log again and

the system will take care

of the duplicates.

Alternatively you can ex-

port the bits you want

from your own log and

just upload that.

The tables we’ll publish

here will be the club, fil-

tered by the current year,

so everyone starts a new

year at 0 contacts.

Duncan MM0GZZ has offered to provide some information on operating with PSK31.

I just started myself in October 2010 so I am new to PSK31.

The frequencies I am using are 21.070MHz, 24.920MHz, 14.070MHz, 28.120MHz, 7.0355MHz and 3.5825MHz

On 14.070 PSK31 I worked HK4MKE Andrew from Columbia, CO4SM Edys from Cuba, BD6JJX Zhang from China, HI5MLE Marcos from Dominican Republic, KC2WTG George in NJ USA, PY2VZ David in Brazil, YC1MAM Lina from Indonesia.

On 21.070 PSK31 PU2OAJ Adriano in Brazil, 9J2KK Katsuma in Zambia, CX4ACH San from Uruguay, LU3CM Hector from Argentina, CO2WL Lazaro from Cuba.

On 28.120 PSK31 mostly Europe with DL sta-tions and PA, The Netherlands but did work ZS1I Johan in South Africa, PY2ROE Carlos from Brazil and CX4AAJ Luis from Uruguay

On 7.035.5 PSK31 mostly Europe with YY4KTM Victor from Venezuela, K5wtb Jake USA, VA3MJR David in Canada

On 3.582.5 PSK31 EA4DS Alessandro in Spain, OZ1TMK Tobin from Denmark, R3BB Victor from Russia to name but a few

This is just a few of the stations I have had the opportunity to have a good QSO with, I have logged 729 QSO's over the last few months on PSK.

My equipment is an FT-1000MP usually using 35 watts but had to use 50w for Indonesia, the antenna is a Hustler 6BTV which covers nearly all bands apart from 17mtrs, the data interface is an Isoterm Multicon by G3LIV and my laptop.

That's it for now, let’s hear from anyone else in the PSK31 world for any hints or tips. My tip is - always give a call on a what looks like a dead band, I have had a few stations come back ...

Duncan MM0GZZ

PSK31 CORNER

Rank Callsign 160 80 60 40 30 20 17 15 12 10 6 4 2 70 DXCCs Slots

1 GM4IKT 0 0 0 6 0 89 11 73 0 21 0 0 0 0 134 200

2 M0RNR 0 8 0 40 0 50 0 17 0 0 0 0 0 0 66 115

3 MM0XXW 0 0 0 28 0 39 15 12 0 0 0 0 0 0 49 94

4 MM5AHO 0 16 5 26 1 11 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 42 60

5 GM4UYZ 0 4 0 2 0 32 0 22 0 0 0 0 0 0 42 60

6 MM0WZB 0 1 0 8 0 9 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 16 23

7 MM0CPS 0 0 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 8

CLUBLOG TABLES

Here are the ClubLog tables since the begin-

ning of the year, we really need more mem-

bers to be uploading their logs to ClubLog to

make more use of this great facility.

Now that the contest season is starting up we

will be uploading the logs from our contest

and special event stations but the activity

from individual logs (and comments sent to

Bob GM4IKT) always make interesting read-

ing.

I'm quite into my data at the moment so I thought I might

send you a list of hints and tips that I found out along the way

(mostly the hard way!) that others may find interesting if they

are starting out with PSK.

* SOFTWARE - Have a search about for software that you get

along with. There are now many choices out there some pay-

ware, but there are loads of good free ones so you don't need

to fork out anything if you don't want to. I use Fldigi, which is

freeware, and an excellent program with advanced features

for both general QSOs and contesting supporting many differ-

ent data modes. Other free ones include Digipan and Mul-

tiPSK and payware ones such as MixW and the Ham Radio

Deluxe suite.

* MACROS - PSK sends reasonably quickly (50 words per mi-

nute for PSK31 and 800WPM for QPSK500!) so if you don't

have nimble fingers (or you don't want RSI very quickly!) then

it is advisable to set up some macros before you get started.

Macros are pre-recorded messages that can be sent by press-

ing an 'F' key on the keyboard or by a click of the mouse. You

can normally use shortcut codes within the macros that link

directly to the other person’s name and callsign etc. to make

the overs a bit more personal. Operators normally configure

several macros with standard information such as name, QTH,

locator, equipment etc. Best to listen in to a few QSOs and

you will soon get the idea of what people have in their macros,

even if you just use them for a quick '<their call> de <your

call>' starter or ender.

* ABBREVIATIONS - Just as in CW, keeping transmission as

short as possible is the name of the game so the same abbre-

viations can be used in data. Ones such as KN, SK, DE etc are

used widely.

* EMPTY LINES - It is normal convention to leave an empty

line before and after each over, as it makes life much easier

for the other operator to read your messages rather than

flowing straight after the last character that they sent or any

random data received.

* CASE SENSITIVITY - Unlike RTTY, PSK is case sensitive so can

send both upper and lower case letters. However upper case

letters transmit in more bytes than lower case (an upper case

'E' uses 5 times more bits than a lower case 'E') so it is best to

keep upper case letters to a minimum if at all possible so keep

over’s shorter.

* ALC AND SPEECH PROCESSORS - It is best to keep your ALC

meter to as close to zero as you can so that IMD’s are as low

as possible, this means turning the processor off when using

data.

* LESS IS MORE - It is generally accepted to keep your power

setting to no more than half of your transmitters stated output

for 3 main reasons. Firstly PSK has duty cycle of about 80% so

if you run high power you will overheat your rig in a very short

time indeed, secondly transmitters tend not to be so linear

when being pushed hard so turning up the wick especially with

a lot of ALC showing on the meter will cause your signal to

splatter well across the band causing chaos to other users

(PSK31 has a narrow bandwidth of 62.5Hz so stations can be

very close!), thirdly with the small bandwidth very strong sig-

nals will completely swap the AGC of other users receivers on

nearby frequencies and you won't be popular. Normally 20-

30W will get you what you need in most cases no bother.

Regards,

Nick MM0NJC

FLDigi

This article first appeared in the GMDX Digest No. 61 and con-

tains some great advice on preparations for an expedition so

I’ve reproduced it here with permission from the GMDX group.

——————————-

In November 2010, I travelled to the Shetland Islands to acti-

vate GZ7V in the CQ WW CW

Contest – Single-operator, All-band, High power.

This GZ prefix was first allocated to our contest group in the

year 2000, so this was a 10-year anniversary trip. In our ama-

teur radio hobby I am often a lone voice, so here I go again – I

am fed up reading about the operating side of DXpeditions!

These articles are all the same – glossy photos of distant

beaches with suntanned operators eating local seafood and

drinking local beer! I’m afraid GZ7V had none of these attrac-

tions, but was great fun all the same.

I bet Caribbean stations don’t get driving conditions like this!

This article concentrates on the antennas I used for this 48

hour contest, with quite a lot of comments which apply equal-

ly to DXpeditions. Let’s start by clarifying some of the basic

points:

1. Golden rule – install and test *everything* before you leave

for the DXpedition. If you have a small garden, ask a friend

who has the space available to install the complete station,

from the 13A mains plugs to the top of the antenna, and test

the lot. There really is no excuse for ‘my laptop did not key the

TX properly’, ‘RF is getting into my mike and keyer’ or ‘I don’t

know how to work this logging software’ etc.- hours of prepa-

ration time will save you stress and allow you to deal with un-

expected local problems, which often can occur no matter

how well prepared you are. If you intend to use a generator,

power your test station from that, to check for QRN, voltage

regulation, etc.

2. If you are going to an island, you have a golden opportunity

to make your signal loud – as if you were running 3kW - simply

by utilising the now well-established fact that vertical anten-

nas on a beach work much better than inland. By ‘on the

beach’ I don’t mean ‘near the beach’ – I mean within 0.1 of a

wavelength of the water’s edge (at high tide) – for example on

20m, your vertical should be within 6 feet of the sea-water, if

not right on the water’s edge. Do not raise the base of the

antenna. Time and again DXpeditions go to islands and forget

this vital fact – resulting in weaker signals and fewer QSOs

made. It has been known for many years that Medium Wave

broadcast stations using vertical antennas situated on the

coast have booming 59+ signals 100 miles out to sea, but their

signal quickly disappears if you go even 20 miles inland. Sea

water is a wonderful earth plane.

3. Take good feeder cable – it is worth spending some money,

because again you are wasting power and losing receive per-

formance if you try to economise on coax feeder. You are also

asking for trouble using poor-quality coax in a multi-

transmitter set-up – there could be leakage which would de-

grade receivers on other bands. By ‘good cable’ I mean

Heliax – yes it’s expensive but it is very difficult to damage by

water ingress and should last you for many many years. Some

20m lengths of LDF4-50A are a great investment for any DXpe-

dition where luggage weight is not a consideration. If you can’t

get Heliax, use RG213U as the bare minimum – never use

RG58U for anything. Modern ‘Mini-8’ cables are also useful,

being thinner, less weight, and fairly good loss figures. Take a

bag of clip-on ferrites to help with any RF problems.

4. If you must use a yagi antenna, consider how you can get it

to a reasonable height – yagis do not really work properly at a

height of 10m, above any kind of ground.

5. I know I go on and on about this, but single-band resonant

antennas are the most efficient – they are fun to design and

construct and will give you better results than any compro-

mise multiband antenna. Avoid all forms of ATU if you can –

(Continued on page 11)

GZ7V 2010 CONTEST DXPEDITION

they just absorb RF power.

6. If you want to work stations more easily on LF, consider

what kind of receive antenna (Beverage, K9AY, Flag, Pennant,

TX3A etc.) you might install. Before every DXpedition I plan

this, but I usually run out of time and/or energy so rarely actu-

ally have any receive antennas to use!

The coastline of Shetland is very rugged, with few houses to

rent which have a beach, so having verticals antennas on the

beach was not really an option for GZ7V – the QTH we visit (at

Braewick in the NW corner of the mainland of Shetland) is

about 300m from the sea, requiring a different strategy. I also

had to bear in mind that I would probably be installing these

antennas single-handed, possibly in a 50mph gale with driving

snow, so they had to be simple and reliable, but as efficient as

possible. The easy approach would

have been a multi-band trap vertical, but their performance is

very poor and I decided to have resonant antennas if possible.

The antennas I used were as follows :

160m – It is difficult to get an efficient radiator on this band,

but not impossible – it is surprising how little vertical height

you need to get a 160m top-loaded vertical to work – ideally

about 60 feet, but even 40 feet will work – yes the loading

wires will be long, but that’s not a problem for a temporary

antenna. My first plan for 160m was to borrow Gavin

GM0GAV’s Titanex V80e vertical. This is a 66-foot vertical

which uses a L/C tuning unit at the base to allow the vertical

section to be matched on 160m, 80m and 40m. There are

about 40 radials laid on the ground around the vertical radia-

tor. The VP8SDX team had problems with this poorly designed

tuning unit flashing over, so I decided to see if I could make it

work better – I failed. I then decided to abandon using this as a

3-band vertical, but instead just to use the lower 35’ or so as

the vertical section for a 160m Inverted-L.

I attached about 100 feet of wire to the top of the 35’ vertical

section, with this 100’ wire sloping down to a fence post,

which resulted in the far end of the 100’ wire being about 10’

above ground. I added 2 elevated quarter-wave radials, each

about 130’ long (about 6’ above ground level supported by 8’

garden canes) – trimming these radials gave 1.0:1 SWR at

1830kHz, with a useable SWR bandwidth of about 40kHz. This

antenna, despite its compromises, worked really well and

seemed to not suffer from too much noise on receive.

GZ7V station 2010

80m – With the Titanex V80e having been abandoned, I decid-

ed to take my home station quarter-wave 80m vertical with

me to GZ7V. This is made from 2 x 21’ lengths of thick-walled

1.5” aluminium tubing, with a thinner-walled extension piece

about 6’ long, then a 7m fibreglass pole at the top, with 2

wires spiraling up the outside of the fishing pole. At home I

have about 60 quarter-wave radials laid around this vertical

radiator, not connected to the two elevated radials about 6’

above ground which are used to resonate the antenna at

3530kHz, by trimming their length. I use a coax balun on this

antenna, but it really needs a proper matching transformer at

the base – the minimum SWR was about 1.5:1 which is OK.

Again this antenna worked really well during the contest.

One problem however was that although I have 3 sets of guys

ropes on the aluminium part of the antenna, I only had one set

of thin guys near the middle of the fibreglass pole, which bent

alarmingly into an ‘S’ shape in the Sunday morning gale, but

somehow survived.

40m – it is reasonably easy to make an efficient 40m antenna

– I like the simple approach i.e. a single quarter-wave vertical,

made from a 10m fishing pole with a single wire taped to the

outside, with 2 elevated radials about 3’ above the ground.

This antenna took about 30 minutes to install and gives relia-

ble results every time.

Luckily the field in which all 3 of these antennas were installed

is very damp – the 80m vertical was right on the edge of a

(Continued from page 10)

(Continued on page 12)

small loch.

20/15/10m – hmmm – some problems deciding on an antenna

for these bands. Verticals were discounted in favour of bor-

rowing the GMDX Group Force12 C3-S yagi antenna. This is a

compact 3-band yagi, with a 12’ boom and 2 full-size elements

on each of the 3 bands – no traps or linear loading devices,

thank goodness. It only weighs about 12kg.

My next problem was how to support this yagi – I have several

hinged bases and a good pulley system with a gin-pole (sorry

falling derrick) so I could single-handedly install the antenna at

about 30’ – not high enough at all, but manageable, especially

if it was windy (which it is for a lot of the time in Shetland).

Another consideration was carrying scaffold poles on the roof-

rack of my estate car – the ferry company would charge me

extortionate extra fees if the poles were longer than the car,

so I ended up taking 2 x 15’ aluminium scaffold poles to sup-

port the C3-S, with 2 rotary guy bearings.

Originally I was going to use a Ham-IV rotator to turn the yagi

from the shack, but after some thought I decided that the

beamwidth would be wide anyway and it would only need

turned about 5 times per day at different times.

When I had to go out several times in the freezing blizzard to

manually turn it, this decision to have no electric rotator did

not seem such a good one!

C3-S installed at GZ7V 2010

This C3-S performed quite well at this low height – it does

however have one problem which I decided to tackle before I

left for the DXpedition. The design of the radiating cell i.e. the

driven element on 20m and the closely coupled 15m and 10m

driven elements, means that in high winds the driven ele-

ments can flail about, the SWR can rocket up and possibly trip

your amplifier. This is a well-known design fault, which was

easy to fix by making 2 PVC pipe spacers which I tie-wrapped

to the 3 elements at about 2/3rds of the length out from the

centre. I installed the C3-S in my front garden on its 30’ sup-

port, adjusted the element lengths to give minimum SWR on

the CW section of each band, then waited for a windy day to

check the PVC spacer modification.

Spacer modification to C3-S driven elements

Conclusion – these relatively simple antennas worked well and

were easy to install. Local amateur Hans GM4SSA / GZ5Y

helped me install and dismantle them – without his help I

would have been a lot more tired for the contest – thanks

Hans. Thanks also to Gavin GM0GAV for the loan of the Ti-

tanex and Rob GM3YTS/GMDX Group for the loan of the C3-S.

The highlight of the operating side of things was working ZL8X

on 80m - I’m sure they were glad to get the GZ multiplier ;-)

Other than the questionable big-pile-up performance of my

new K3, there were really no low points, although conditions

were only average and that weekend was the start of the

snowy weather in the North of Scotland.

Chris Tran GM3WOJ / ZL1CT

(Continued from page 11)

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

1. A balun is:

a. used instead of a dummy load

b. used to connect a dipole to coaxial cable

c. a particular type of antenna

d. A type of feeder.

2. Two receiving stations are situated on clear open

ground 5km and 10km from a VHF transmitter. The further station will:

a. receive a weaker signal because the signal has spread

out more

b. receive the same signal because they are both in clear

ground

c. receive no signal if it is directly behind the closer sta-

tion

d. Only receive a signal if it is correctly licensed.

3. The ionosphere is:

a. another name for the air we breath

b. conductive gasses at heights of 70 to 400km

c. a type of spherical transmitting antenna

d. a piece of amateur radio test equipment

4. Amateur transmissions might be picked up by:

a. any wiring in the neighbour's house

b. only wiring which is longer than 2 metres

c. only wiring that does not have an earth lead

d. Earth leads only.

5. One way of reducing the possibility of interference

from a single sideband (s.s.b.) transmitter to a televi-sion receiver in the next house is to:

a. use an indoor transmitting antenna

b. increase power input to the transmitter

c. decrease power input to the transmitter

d. Decrease the number of frequency multiplying stages

in the transmitter.

6. Why is it advisable to purchase a ready made filter

for fitting in the mains lead of a radio receiving de-vice?

a. A home made device may not let the radio signals

through.

b. A purchased item will look much nicer.

c. The filter may not work well.

d. It is dangerous to put home made devices in the

mains.

7. The difference between a CQ call on 2 metres FM and

one on HF SSB is that the call on FM:

a. is usually much shorter than when on HF SSB

b. must be made at the lowest possible power

c. needs to be repeated many times while somebody is

tuning in to your signal -F

d. Is only permitted on the set calling channels. -,

8. In the 2 metre band plan, the frequencies from

144.994MHz to 145.1395MHz are allocated to:

a. fm simplex channels

b. fm repeater inputs

c. SSB and CW only

d. Satellites.

9. An adult should be present when erecting an antenna

because:

a. it is a hazardous activity

b. heavy items will need to be lifted

c. they have more knowledge of First Aid

d. The antenna must be placed out of reach of a child.

10. Turning the power off in an emergency is made easier

and quicker if:

a. all the switches and plugs are colour coded

b. proper fuses are used in each plug

c. Each socket has indicator lights when they are on.

d. There is a single switch controlling all the power.

Contacts

General correspondence,

training and contest

entries

Bob Glasgow

7 Castle Terrace

Port Seton

East Lothian

EH32 0EE

Phone: 01875 811723

E-mail:

gm4uyz@cpsarc.com

HF Contests

Cambell Stevenson

mm0dxc@aol.com

VHF Contests

John MacLean

mm0ccc@cpsarc.com

Club Tables

Bob Purves

gm4ikt@cpsarc.com

Contest Reports

Robin Farrer

mm0vtv@cpsarc.com

Newsletter, website,

event calendar

John Innes

newsletter@cpsarc.com

3 June 2011 Club Night

4/5 June 2011 UKSMG Summer Es Contest 13:00 (24Hrs)

12 June 2011 Practical Wireless 144MHz QRP Contest

18 June 2011 Newsletter Deadline

18/19 June 2011 Museums on the Air Weekend GB2MOF

22 June 2011 CPSARC 20m Activity Night 19:00—22:00

24 June 2011 Club Night (Early to avoid clashing with VHF Field Day)

2/3 July 2011 VHF Field Day

30/31 July 2011 RSGB IOTA Contest GM2T from Tiree

30 July 2011 Newsletter Deadline

5 August 2011 Club Night

12 August 2011 18th Annual Mini Rally Night

20/21 August 2011 Lighthouses Weekend GB2LBN

2 September 2011 Club Night

23 September 2011 2nd 144MHz DF Hunt

7 October 2011 Club Night

21 October 2011 Video Night

29/30 October 2011 CQWW SSB Contest GM2T

4 November 2011 Club Night

18 November 2011 Talk by Len Paget GM0ONX ‘Planning Permission’

2 December 2011 Club Night

10 December 2011 Club Christmas Night Out

Events Column Answers from June 2011 newsletter “Test Your Knowledge”.

1B, 2A, 3B, 4A, 5C, 6D, 7A, 8B, 9A, 10D

Photos of the demonstration station

at the Port Seton Gala Day