Bulletin: 1st August 2015

Operation Musketeer Recalled

Image: Airbourne Assault Duxford

On net today Jack, G3PWK reminded us of the forthcoming 60th Anniversary of Operation Musketeer and a parachute operation to capture El Gamil Airfield in November 1956.

New Licences and New Branch Members.  

The branch welcomes two new veteran members:  Paul Evans and Mark Poland.

Bill G4NRE Came up today with interesting news about his XYL Teresa who has the new callsign M6TIB.  Congratulations Teresa. Look forward to working you on net.

On Net:

G3WOV, G3PWK, G4NRE and G4IYK

Holiday Season

July brings the main holiday season and corresponding absence of regular contacts.

I packed a PRC320 for my week away.

This old rig is very useful for amateur radio (a large portion of the clansman fleet ended up on the surplus market).

It gave me a couple of interesting contacts on 60 meters with stations at a range of 600 (Isle of Arran) and 825 Km (Banff) using the issued dipole

The holiday location in Falmouth was fairly quiet in terms of radio noise and the test gave the opportunity to compare noise levels in a rural environment against those in the urban environment.  The photo shows my holiday rig with an LDG Automatic ATU.

Wednesday 40M Net

Throughout the month effort has been put into developing a forty meter net with interesting results.  Mike, G4ICC and Tom, G4CMG both report variable conditions.  Another member station – John MW3SBH – located in Mold, Clwyd has been worked on 15th and 22nd.

On Wednesday  29th July I listened out but band conditions would not support communications at our sort of ranges.  I took a snapshot of the prediction chart for the day (above) which shows the frequency bands around 7Mhz supporting communications at well over 600km at the time we were operating – but not at frequencies below.  That was certainly the experience – our ears were telling us.  Signals from Spain and the Northern Mediterranean were coming in on the adjacent channels and no inter UK traffic.

I noted 60m (5Mhz) was open at the time.

We will be listening out again next Wednesday especially for RE Radio stations in Scotland.

73 de G4IYK