2017 Autumn Ragchew

THE INTERNATIONAL LIGHTHOUSE AND LIGHTSHIP WEEKEND BY

EDMUND M0MNG

SSB FIELD DAY BY GRAHAM G4FNL

Plus JONATHAN G1EXG’S SHORT CIRCUIT PRESIDENTIAL PONDERINGS CHAIRMAN’S CHATTER CORRESPONDENCE CLUB CALENDAR RALLIES

Autumn 2017

Worthing & District Amateur Radio Club Established 1948 Website: www.wadarc.org.uk

E-mail: info@wadarc.org.uk President: Chris Smith G3UFS WADARC meets every Wednesday at 8pm in the Lancing Parish Hall, South Street, Lancing BN15 8AJ. All who have an interest in radio communications and associate subjects, whether a licensed amateur or not, are wel. WADARC can also arrange training for the radio amateur Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced licences.

The WADARC Committee 2017 – 2018 Chairman Alan Baker G4GNX Vice-Chairman Leslie Sampson G3JSU Secretary Andy Braeman M6RFE Treasurer Roger Ferrand G7VBR Raymond Ellett M6IKO Norman Jacobs 2E0RKO Ian MacDonald M0IAD Alex Slee 2E0UMD These Committee and Members have volunteered to accept the following responsibilities: Membership Manager Ian MacDonald M0IAD Ragchew Editor Roger Hall G4TNT Website Andrew Cheeseman G1VUP / Alastair Weller M0OAL Special Events Stations Peter Head G4LKW Online Content Coordinator Alan Baker G4GNX Outside Events Coordinator, Facilities and Bookings Norman Jacobs 2E0RKO Training Coordinators Alastair Weller M0OAL / Andrew Cheeseman G1VUP Exam Secretary Alastair Weller M0OAL Press and Publicity Coordinator Les Sampson G3JSU Quartermasters Andy Braeman M6RFE / Raymond Ellett M6IKO Club Calendar Coordinator Vacant Weekly News Email Phil Godbold G4UDU, Alan Baker G4GNX, Jonathan Hare G1EXG

WADARC Club Nets (all times are local) 07.30

Sunday

3.725MHz ± QRM SSB

19.30

Monday

145.425MHz (V34/S17)

11.00

Thursday

7.106MHz ± QRM SSB

CONTENTS Editorial ....................................................4 Presidential Ponderings ...........................5 Chairman’s Chatter .................................6 SSB Field Day by Graham G4FNL .....................8 Short Circuits by Jonathan G1EXG .....................14 Outside Event – ILLW by Edmund M0MNG .......16 Correspondence .......................................22 Rallies .......................................................27 Club Calendar ..........................................28

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EDITORIAL

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elcome once again to the latest edition of Ragchew. I must start by thanking all those who sent in contributions because I’ve received quite a few recently and once again I’ve had to hold a few over for the next issue! It definitely makes my life a lot easier when I’m putting issues together and I’m sure members appreciate reading about events and memories.

In This Issue We’ve had an AGM since the last issue and the Club now has a new Chairman, Alan G4GNX. You can read his thoughts on the future of the Club in his first Chairman’s Chatter is in this issue.

Graham G4FNL describes taking part in the Restricted Section of this year’s SSB Field day with his friend and contest partner Peter G4BVH. This time in his Short Circuits column Jonathan G1EXG takes a look at receiving loops and explains how they can be used in conjunction with your transmitter to help you get better QSOs. Edmund M0MNG recounts how he went under canvas for the first time to make sure he didn’t miss a minute of the International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend.

Ted G3EUE has written in to share with members his reminiscences of a great caravan holiday he spent with his wife and son in Western Australia back in 1978.

We finish this issue with a list of forthcoming rallies and the latest Club calendar for the next couple of months.

Finally Once again, I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this issue of Ragchew. It wouldn’t exist without you.

If you have anything you’d like to contribute to the next issue, please do get in touch with me at ragchew@wadarc.org.uk 73, Roger G4TNT

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PRESIDENTIAL PONDERINGS

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y, these requests for 500 words come around very quickly, or so it seems! I’m currently writing this with a severe backache that came on yesterday evening. I have no idea how or what I did to bring on this problem but I do know is that it is very painful to move various parts of my body.

However, I will do my best to create something readable Isn’t it strange how ‘things’ conspire to frustrate one’s plans? On Monday 23rd October, my car showed a fault icon on the dashboard display that, according to the instruction book, means “I should only drive the car with caution and to get the car to a garage ASAP”.

The problem was that a couple of days later on the 25th I was due to drive my partner up to Chieveley Services at the junction of the A34 and the M4 where she was going to meet her son. He was then going to drive them both to Wales for a family birthday party on the 28th so you can imagine my concern. Luckily, I managed to get my garage to take the car in on the Monday afternoon but, of course, just prior to taking the it in, the display decided to clear itself and showed “No fault”! It was like going to the dentist only to find the pain had disappeared.

However, I still took the car in and when I went back the following morning, they told me the fault icon hadn’t come back on but it might return at any time and a repair would then cost me £145.00, so I collected the car – and a bill for £89.00.

They hadn’t repaired anything but at least I knew I could carry out my ferry duties the following day. I now have to do the trip again on October 31st to retrieve my partner and take her home. I’m keeping my fingers, and several other parts of my body, crossed! I think the incident might have given me several more grey hairs.

The thing that crosses my mind is that with the complexity of today’s motor cars, the likelihood is some warnings are now showing because of computer glitches and not mechanical faults. I say, bring back the Austin 7!

Well, we have now moved to our new home in the Lancing Parish Hall and I think using the adjacent room with the shuttered bar is just right as it can accommodate our smaller membership conveniently. It’s also good to have GB3WO working again. For a while I thought that might not happen. It will be interesting to see if its coverage has improved with the raising of the antenna.

I was saddened to learn that we might have lost quite a few members. It seems many have not yet renewed their subscriptions – if you haven’t, please do so.

We cannot allow our club to disappear after such a long time in existence. We need your combined help to stop this decline.

“That’s all folks” as they say in the cartoons. See you next time.

73, Chris G3UFS

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CHAIRMAN’S CHATTER elcome to my first Chairman's Chatter. I’d like to start by giving my personal thanks to Andrew G1VUP, our outgoing Chairman, and, of course, to last year's officers and Committee members who have all helped to make WADARC continue to flourish.

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Venue As usual, it's been a varied year but one good thing is we've managed to hang on to our meeting venue (for now) and so far it's cost us nothing except some time and effort. I aim to keep it that way, although we're all actively looking for suitable premises that will address all our needs and doesn't cost a fortune – we are all looking, aren't we?

Club Programme The programme of events has been a bit of a struggle. We need ideas for talks and suggestions for speakers. I realise that it's the job of the Committee to arrange the programme but if we don't know what members want, it's going to be hard to please everyone. Perhaps a questionnaire would help. As they say, answers on a postcard please or, as it probably should be nowadays, by e-mail.

We’ve have had ideas in the past for a club project but they never came to anything. Now we’d like to try again. If you have a project in mind that you think would be something that the majority are interested in, please let me or someone on the Committee know. Ideally, it should be something the less confident members can be helped with by members who are more experienced.

Special Events Special events continue to be supported but we really can't expect the same people to keep turning out each time without some help from other members. As we get older we might not want to brave the weather or rise early. I especially appreciate that as I ‘don't do’ mornings! However, we do have one or two members who are 80+ years old and maybe they put

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C us younger ones to shame with their efforts. If you can manage just the odd hour of operating or helping to erect or dismantle a station, it really would be appreciated.

We should remember that special events are one of the few ways we have of getting the public interested in amateur radio, which is important to help us maintain membership numbers.

All special events carry a full amateur radio licence, which should be of interest to our Foundation and Intermediate licensees because it gives them a chance to get on the end of 400W into an antenna that's out in the clear so they can work some DX or just be an ambassador for the Club.

Mentoring At a recent Committee meeting it was pointed out that new licensees are not very well catered for within WADARC and if new members feel disillusioned, they may leave the club, which is the last thing any of us want. In an attempt to remedy this, we’re going to try to have some mentoring sessions on our tea and chat nights as well as talks on basic setups, how to get on the local repeater and so on. There might even be some CW tuition for those who are interested.

Anniversary We’re fast approaching 2018, which marks the 70th year of WADARC. I hope that, like me, you all feel that we should mark the occasion with a celebration. Some suggestions we’ve had include a trophy of some kind as a permanent reminder, a visit to GCHQ or some other radio related venue or a special dinner of some sort.

If you have any ideas, I'd like to hear them. Please send them directly to me or to any other Committee member.

Onwards and upwards – 2018 approaches...

73, Alan. G4GNX

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OUTSIDE EVENT SSB FIELD DAY 2017 Graham G4FNL looks back at taking part in the Restricted Section of this year’s SSB Field day with his friend and contest partner Peter G4BVH.

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arlier in the year, I broached the subject of entering SSB Field Day with other WADARC members but only a couple of people responded so I decided to put in my own entry. Actually, it was a joint entry with my friend Peter G4BVH, whom some will recall from past years SSB Field Day contests at Adversane, West Sussex. Previously, we operated as a duo in the same SSB contest back in 2014. It went well and hence we decided to have another go this year.

G4FNL/P for 2017 with a typical Restricted Section Field Day setup – two masts supporting a doublet aerial.

Setting Up We have a friendly farmer who allows us the use of a field that’s situated on the top of the Downs, to the North of Brighton. We’ve used this venue for a number of years and it does seem to be a successful location.

Peter and I arranged to meet at the site at 8:00am on Saturday morning.

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CC We reasoned that we should be able to get the equipment set up and working within five hours, leaving one hour for tinkering and starting the contest at 2:00pm. As it turned out, with the good weather and a little assistance from my brother, we managed to get everything up and tested by 11:00am. This was a remarkable achievement and meant that we had over three hours to fully check the gear and to evaluate the HF propagation to determine how we would operate over the next 24 hours.

Our radio was an Elecraft K3 transceiver and in order to take maximum advantage of the rules, we used my radio because it has two separate receivers installed. The remainder of the radio equipment consisted of two Heil Pro-Set Plus headsets and a remotely-controlled manual antenna tuner that we have developed over several years. We’d used the latest The operating shack inside the hired van. version with remote control facilities in June 2017 for the CW event (National Field Day). In the results from that competition, we were the runner-up. As this antenna and tuner arrangement seems to work so well, we decided to use it again for the SSB contest in September 2017.

Logging was carried out on two networked laptop PCs and the N1MM+ software. This also produced the majority of the CW (Morse code) that we sent but we also had a paddle each just in case it was needed. All the receiving and decoding of CW signals was using our own ears!

The tuner is quite large, as can be seen in the photo, and it comprises

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C six separate Z-match tuners – one for each HF band. For each one there is an open wire feeder switch connection that we operate using a PICcontrolled stepper motor from the shack. In addition, we also switch the coax input to each tuner, using a Six-Pack commercial relay switching arrangement. Set up consists of switching each tuner to connect the antenna and the coax feeders and then going from band to band to adjust and preset each tuner so that during the contest we can switch the input and output feeders from the shack to suit each band, which saves valuable operating time. This The remotely controlled antenna tuner. setup has an added benefit.

We can locate the tuner well away from the radio equipment and avoid the RF problems that we have suffered from in the past. There is a wooden box contraption that covers the tuners to keep the weather out and the whole thing was positioned immediately below the centre feed point of the doublet antenna, which at its longest was a half wave dipole for 80m and which was supported by two extended masts that were just under 15m in height. For anyone who is interested, this is the schematic diagram of each tuner.

Schematic showing the electrical setup of each tuner.

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C The radio produces 100W of RF and with the simple wire antenna, it’s always a bit of struggle to make a big impact on the bands. Nonetheless, with the equipment deployed as described, it was probably the optimum that we could achieve within the rules.

Getting Started

Graham G4FNL

The contest started at 13:00z on Saturday 2nd September 2017. We had made sure the generator was Peter G4BVH full and we’d made a few test QSOs on each band to make sure the gear and logging were working correctly.

It also gave us plenty of opportunity to assess band conditions and decide on our strategy. The latter is usually a mix of determining where we will get maximum QSOs and multipliers (a multiplier or ‘mult’ is a new DXCC country on each band).

We started on the highest band (28MHz). The propagation was poor but we made our first QSO within the first minute with YL2TV (Latvia).

Despite persevering with the band and with the two of us searching up and down the band, using the big knob, little knob technique, we could not make any further QSOs so we moved on to 14MHz. (We did take a listen to 21MHz en route but there was nothing on the band at that time.)

Propagation was a little better on 20m but it was still very slow going so after 12 minutes of operating and with just eight contacts in the log, we

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C decided to move further LF and landed on 7MHz. It wasn’t long before we had a good ‘run’ going and by the end of the first hour, we had 77 QSOs in the log.

We continued exploiting 40m for the rest of the afternoon with occasional moves to the higher HF bands in an attempt to pick out some much-needed mults.

We carried on operating, either as a pair hunting up and down the bands for stations to work or sometimes, if propagation allowed and if we could maintain a ‘run’ frequency, we would call CQ. This gave the other operator some time off-duty. Actually, the off-duty person had to fill the generators every four hours plus organise the catering.

We managed to make a few notable contacts; BY (China) and E21 (Thailand) on 15m, HZ (Saudi Arabia) on 40m, W3 and KP4 (East Coast USA) and VK3 (Australia) on 20m.

Our contest was concurrent with the All Asian contest where the exchange is your age but, surprisingly and probably because of propagation challenges, we didn’t manage any QSOs with JA (Japan).

Overnight As ever, the contest slows down overnight. It’s quite demotivating and difficult with the much lower QSO rate, plus the temptation to drop off to sleep. This, combined with the monotony of searching around bands, trying to squeeze every last QSO, makes it even tougher but that is exactly what we did.

We each took a break for three or four hours sleep, which certainly helped. We continued the cycle of moving up and down bands, trying to make as many QSOs as we could.

HF propagation was disappointing throughout and that showed in the lack of QSOs on 10 and 15m but, somehow, we ended up with 827 contacts and a multiplier total of 115 countries over the 24 hours that we were operational.

Conclusion At the end of the 24 hours continuous operating period our QSO statistics were as shown in the table.

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C BAND

QSOS

POINTS

MULTS

3.5

330

1102

29

7

272

927

30

14

190

619

36

21

33

112

18

28

2

6

2

Totals

827

2766

115

Claimed Score (points x mults)

318,090

At the time of writing (mid-October 2017) we do not have the final adjudicated results but going by claimed scores, we appear to be in the lead.

It’s a shame the club wasn’t able to enter a team but, hopefully, this write-up might inspire others to consider joining forces and entering a team in future events.

73,

Update The results have now been published and congratulations are due to Graham and Peter because it’s been confirmed they came first in the unassisted section.

Graham G4FNL

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G1EXG’S SHORT CIRCUITS Jonathan G1EXG takes a look at receiving loops and explains how they can be used in conjunction with your transmitter for better QSOs.

SHORT CIRCUIT NO. 16: SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE RECEIVING LOOPS

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oise is often an issue for the radio amateur. One way to tackle the problem is to use a separate antenna just for receiving – you keep your main antenna solely for transmitting. Then, if you make your receiving antenna directional, you can hopefully position it as far as you can from the source(s) of local noise and if you then rotate it, it’s usually possible to reduce the noise even further. The emphasis is on nulling the local noise rather than peaking a specific signal.

A Note on Transmitting Loops A really efficient small transmitting loop (small compared to the wavelength) is quite hard to make. Ideally, you need the loop to be made of one piece of large diameter good conductivity metal tube and you should ensure you make a really good low resistance connection to the tuning capacitor. This needs to be a wide spaced variety; ideally a high voltage vacuum type. As this sort is sealed, it will remain clean over time.

A Loop for Receiving An effective receiving loop is a whole lot cheaper and easier to make. You can use a standard tuning capacitor and the loop will even work with household type insulated wire. Efficiency is not a key issue for reception; it's the difference between the signal and noise that counts.

Note: the signal from the small loop may be less than

A receive loop made from 3D printed parts and wooden dowels etc. The red wire forms the resonant loop while the black wire forms a triangular coupling coil to go to the receiver.

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you receive on your main antenna but often the noise is reduced even further so, overall the reception is clearer.

A simple loop made from 3D printed parts is shown (side length L = about 50cm) as well as one made from wood but you can often use whatever you have to hand in the junk box and garage (wood, plastic, bamboo poles and so on). The loop can be made square or circular from enamelled or insulated copper wire.

The 3D printed loop might look like a toy but it actually works well.

Turns The table shows the range of resonant frequency possible for a given number of turns for my particular loop using a medium wave radio type tuning capacitor (with the two Frequency (MHz) gangs joined together). This is only a guide, of Turns Min Max course, because it will depend on the size of 6 0.9 4.6 your own loop and the spacing between the 5 1.1 5.4 turns and so on. It's quite impressive when you 4 1.2 6.5 listen on a receiver and tune the loop. As you hit 3 1.6 8.3 resonance, the band suddenly appears. You 2 2.2 12 may need a reduction drive on the capacitor as the tuning is sharp. In the 3D printed version, I 1 3.6 21 simply printed out a very large knob to go on the capacitor!

How It Works RF signals arriving broadside to the loop (i.e. from direction A) induce currents in the two sides of the loop that tend to cancel each other. Signals arriving from direction B will induce currents that are out of phase so don't cancel exactly. The result is that broadside on, the loop has a very sharp null in its response which you can use to minimise signal from that direction. You can tap into the loop to connect to the receiver but it's probably better to use a coupling coil. This can be a

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C small wire loop (or triangle) coupling coil hung inside the loop (the position is not critical). Changing the size of the coupling loop will determine the antenna impedance but in practice it does not make much difference on receive. The bidirectional nature of the loop means you should only need to rotate the antenna over 180 degrees. However, my experience is that the 'figure of 8' pattern is often skewed and so it's still worth trying 360-degree rotation for the best null.

If you can mount the loop on a camera tripod, you can not only rotate it 360 degrees but also adjust the pitch (or slope) of the loop, which can lead to even better noise reduction. If you live in a particularly noisy location and feel you have '360 degrees of noise' all around you, you might want to try this.

Stations that happen to lie in the direction of the null of the loop will, of course, also be reduced in strength. However, the distant radio waves may well come in at a different angle to the noise, in which case you still may hear them. This is why you need to adjust the other two planes of rotation of the loop as described above using something like a tripod.

One winter evening I tuned to the SSB DX end of 80m with a home-made receiver and found EA9IE 'working' the world’. Using the tripod mounted loop in an upstairs bedroom, I received him 59+. I could also hear almost everything he was working too!

The take-home message then is that a small basic home-made receiving loop strung up a few feet above the ground (either inside or outside) can, when correctly aligned, give a worthwhile reduction in noise.

73, Jonathan G1EXG

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OUTSIDE EVENT THE INTERNATIONAL LIGHTHOUSE AND LIGHTSHIP WEEKEND Edmund M0MNG’s favourite event took place at Shoreham Lighthouse recently and he was there for the duration, despite having to camp out for the first time.

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he 2017 International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend (ILLW) took place over the weekend of 19th and 20th August. This year saw the twentieth ILLW in its current format, although the event can trace it roots back to 1993. Visit www.illw.net for the full history.

WADARC first put GB8SL on the air from Shoreham Lighthouse in 1999 and the ILLW has always been my favourite event since I became licensed in 2009.

This year I arrived on the Friday afternoon just after 1500 to look around the site and to take some photos. Several club members Shoreham Lighthouse arrived shortly afterwards and it didn’t take too long to get the tent up and the antenna in the air. I am not going to list everybody who helped with the setting up (and the dismantling on the Sunday afternoon) in case I miss anybody out. You know who you are!

Equipment We’ve used Norman 2E0RKO’s pump-up mast for the last couple of years but this time we deployed a 48ft pole instead, which is the tallest we have ever used. This supported our 80m to 10m trapped dipole – one end was tied to the gallery at the top of Shoreham Lighthouse while the other end was supported by a conveniently-located telegraph pole.

We used the Club’s IC-7300 connected to an enormous manual antenna matching unit that was almost twice the size of the Icom! This fed a 300W linear amplifier. The station was operated mainly by Pete G4LKW, Pete 2E0FVL and me and all three of us camped on site throughout.

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GB8SL's Guard Dog

Camping was a first for me but I did it because I wanted to make a bigger effort this year for the ILLW’s anniversary. Usually, I just turn up for a couple of hours but this time I decided to stay there for the duration.

My tent stood in the shelter of the main operating tent, which earned me the title of GB8SL Guard Dog! Many thanks to everybody who helped me put up and pack it all away; I had absolutely no previous experience with tents.

On the Air Officially the ILLW runs from 0001z on the Saturday until 2359z on the Sunday but many lighthouses test their station on the Friday evening so GB8SL went on the air on 40m for a couple of hours and was worked widely across continental Western Europe.

After the station closed down in SSB, I connected my WSPRLite to our antenna and transmitted the GB8SL callsign through the night on 20m.

I had expected the band to be closed for much of the night but I found the 200mW signals were received regularly across Europe. It just goes to show the difference that a good antenna can make!

Incidentally, I’d intended to transmit WSPR ‘after hours’ during both nights but I was so tired that I fell asleep in my tent before the station closed down on Saturday evening.

GB8SL was on the air from approximately 0700 to 2230 on the Saturday and then again from about 0700 until 1550 on the Sunday (local time).

Most QSOs took place on 40m, apart from a handful of contacts on 80m, 20m and 70cms. 20m brought us our best DX when a station in

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C Canada called us – this happened on the Saturday afternoon from memory. Every other contact was inside Europe.

QSOs on HF were purely using SSB. I left my key at home in any case but if I’m brutally honest, my CW wouldn’t have been up to scratch, especially if a pileup had resulted with multiple stations calling us at high speeds! Maybe next year after a lot more practice.

Propagation was better than I expected. The skip distance was short enough on 40m to allow local QSOs with other stations in England at times, particularly around lunchtime on Sunday. The defining feature of that band was deep and rapid QSB the whole weekend. Stations could go from 59+ to zero in less than 60 seconds!

Some amateurs were very keen to get GB8SL into their log. For example, Carl 2E0HPI/P spent over two hours calling from his lighthouse before he was successful. We had a number of pileups, but I know for a fact that a couple of people tried calling us repeatedly outside of the pileups. Regrettably propagation meant that we simply never heard them.

APRS I transmitted an APRS beacon every 30 minutes during the hours that GB8SL was active on HF. My Yaesu FT1DE put 2W into a 7/8 lambda whip on top of my car.

I believe Tony 2E0BHS was in Brighton when he received this transmission and curiosity then prompted him to visit.

I don’t know if he received the transmission on 144.800MHz directly or if Ian M0IAD’s digipeater did the honours and Tony saw us on the APRS website. Either way, the beacon had the intended effect; it allowed people to see our location and that we were QRV. My handheld even allowed me to select an icon that actually looked like a lighthouse!

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C Overall the whole weekend was an improvement compared to the previous two. In 2015 we closed down a few hours early because propagation was so bad. In 2016 we lost a lot of time shoring up the tent after it was battered continuously by strong winds throughout the Saturday.

We had neither problem in 2017; we didn't have any major problems at all really. The weather was either sunny or overcast for the whole weekend apart from a very heavy rain shower around Saturday lunchtime.

Interference The one minor irritation was the MF mast at Southwick. It stands only a fraction of a mile away from GB8SL and broadcasts five radio stations at various power levels. A cursory internet search does not reveal any official information about this mast – for example, details of who operates it.

From enthusiast and other websites, I gather its most powerful transmission is TalkSPORT (1053kHz) at 2.2kW. I do not know if this is ERP (EMRP?) or if it’s the power at the back of the transmitter.

This mast has always caused us problems to a greater or lesser extent but the interference seemed particularly noticeable this year. At one stage we switched to AM in the middle of 40m and I was able to name the singer and song audible through the distortion! There was over S9 of noise on 80m, which made the band unusable for all but very local contacts.

BBC Sussex have announced plans to abandon medium wave broadcasting in 2018. If this actually goes ahead and they switch off their 1485kHz outlet, it might help our cause slightly. However, the BBC website lists this transmission as ‘only’ 1kW… so probably not!

TalkSPORT’s jingles still promote AM as the main way of listening, even ahead of DAB or listening online so it is likely to be many years before this mast is switched off completely.

Phil G4UDU tried connecting an antenna analyser to our dipole. There was so much RF coming down the coax that the analyser was swamped and simply couldn’t cope; it reacted as if there were no antenna connected at all.

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C Even my Etón E5 portable radio would not allow me to listen without the attenuator switched on. Without it, the audio was distorted beyond all recognition, despite the radio using just an internal ferrite bar. I might take a crystal radio with a paperclip antenna next year!

Most transceivers would not stand a chance in these circumstances, so the Icom IC-7300 actually gave a respectable account of itself. Phil G4UDU tells us that a high-pass filter exists that we could fit to the Icom.

Let’s hope one materialises in time for next year.

The weekend flew by and there were several things that I simply never got around to. These included attempting to work through the FM satellites, putting up a separate 20m dipole for use with my WSPRLite during daylight hours, calling on 4m FM, listening to the VHF marine band (yes, I do hold a Ships Portable Licence), visiting the adjacent RNLI Lifeboat Station and shop and trying to receive the temporary QRP broadcast station Radio Airbourne (sic) from Eastbourne on 87.7MHz. In Conclusion By the time GB8SL closed down at 1550 on Sunday, we had managed just under 300 QSOs on HF or just over 300 if you include the half-adozen that I made on 70cms. Nearly 40 of those contacts were with lighthouses and lightships. Our thanks must go to the Shoreham Rowing Club for once again providing us with mains electricity and allowing us to use their facilities. It makes a huge difference being able to boil a kettle for tea and coffee, as does having a shower in the morning!

Thanks also to fellow members of the Worthing & District Amateur Radio Club who visited us. We did monitor GB3WO but, unfortunately, we didn’t hear anybody and nobody came back to our calls. If you are not able to visit us in person in 2018, then we would be very pleased to work you through our Club’s repeater instead.

I made a video of the event and you can see it on YouTube at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=buDpNPSIew8 73, Edmund M0MNG

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CORRESPONDENCE A CARAVAN HOLIDAY IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA Ted G3EUE has written in to share his memories of a fantastic caravan holiday he spent with his wife in Western Australia almost 40 years ago.

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y wife and I visited Western Australia in 1978 for a holiday because our eldest son had been working there for some time. It was our first visit and we were determined to see as much as possible in a month so it seemed logical to use a caravan for the duration. We hired a 16ft one, which was far from new but still adequate, in Perth and it provided ample accommodation. There was a foldaway double bed along with two singles, a dining area with a removable table, bench seating, a Gaz fridge and a cooker. There was no lavatory but we quickly established a ‘walking the spade’ routine in the bush.

We were able to use a mains connection on the few occasions when we used a caravan park. The van carried a notice "Sealed Roads Only”, which wasn't very practical seeing that the Great Northern Highway was unsealed for hundreds of miles. (It was probably a legal safeguard by the owner in the event of a major breakdown in the bush.)

Land Cruiser My son owned an elderly Toyota Land Cruiser, which would make an excellent towing vehicle. During its lifetime, a number of items had been added to cope with off-the-road conditions, including extra air and fuel filtration, heavy-duty springs and so on. One facility, which was new to us at the time, was the provision with the caravan of a pair of side locking bars so that the two units could be locked together, forming one rigid unit for easier long-distance towing on straight roads.

The disadvantage of this rigid unit arrangement was that ‘feel’ was lost, particularly on rough roads. On one section Nick complained that we seemed to have lost power with heavy steering only to find that we had a puncture in one of the caravan tyres and we had been towing it in that condition for several miles. The rim was flattened with just the remains of a very sorry looking tyre casing. (Incidentally, we got a refund for the burst caravan tyre!) On that same section of road we later punctured one of the Toyota tyres but we were able to buy a replacement and get the repair

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C done at the next filling station some 50 miles on. The garage itself was no more than a wayside shack but it had a mountain of wheels of every imaginable size. They had been reclaimed over the years from the many wrecked and abandoned vehicles we’d seen along the road. The price for the caravan wheel was very reasonable – just one dollar. Whilst working on our vehicle the owner said that this was the first new tyre he had sold that month, so business was obviously pretty slack. I guessed the adjoining mountain of empty beer bottles had given him something to do.

A great advantage of the Toyota was that it had a wide front bench seat so the three of us sat together. In any case, there was little room in the back for passengers, what with spare wheels, 10 gallons of water, jerry cans of fuel, an outboard motor with a dinghy and all the rest of the gear we thought would be ‘essential’ for a four-week trip. Naturally, the vehicle had 4-wheel drive, which was necessary for some areas, and it certainly made towing much easier on one 350-mile unsealed, graded inland road that was pretty rough in places. As a matter of routine, we decided to use 4-wheel drive on all unsealed roads.

The all-up weight of the combined Toyota/caravan unit was high and this was reflected in petrol consumption. The Toyota is normally a thirsty vehicle but with our load we averaged just 11.3 miles per gallon for the whole journey. Fortunately, at that time the exchange rate was favourable so the cost of fuel was low to us but with a small tank we had to fill up at every opportunity. Luckily, roadhouses were usually only about 80 to 100 miles apart so we only had to use the spare fuel we carried on board on one occasion.

During the trip, we had one or two problems but they didn't cause real difficulty. The worst was a split water tank meant that we had to rely on our barrel of drinking water and it gave us lots of red dust to clean up at the end of the journey.

Our vehicle was rigged with a twin battery system that enabled both to be charged whilst we were travelling. At night, the main one was unused as it was reserved for starting the vehicle and the other was used for the 12V freezer box and the lighting. We also carried a 2-pint Eske – an insulated water carrier – which we kept topped up with ice cubes at roadhouse stops. For refreshment we bought a sack of oranges.

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C Our Route We started our travels in Narrogin, a small market town situated 120 miles east of Perth, and then we took the only inland road north, called the Great Northern Highway, to Port Hedland. Then it was south by the coast road through Perth to the south-western corner of the State and then back to Narrogin. The whole trip amounted to about 3,600 miles and it took us 23 days. We’d decided on that particular route because we wanted to visit friends in the mining town of Mount Newman, which is where the metalled road ends.

From there it was on to Marble Bar, which is reputed to be the hottest place in Australia. The midday day shade temperature there exceeds 100°C for at least 100 days a year.

After that we went to Meethakara where there is a major radio station in the Flying Doctor service and visitors are made most welcome. At the time we were there the operator was dealing with telegram traffic. Typical prescriptions given over the air were along the lines of "Take three tablets of number 30 or four drops of number 66". At the station there also was an interesting display of medical equipment held at outstations both past and present. I was surprised to find the same network is also used for schools-on-the-air.

We then travelled further north until we reached Mount Newman, a fully developed company-owned town that exists solely to extract iron ore for export to Japan. A tour can be arranged and the magnificent gardens and tree-lined streets provided a welcome contrast to the surrounding bush.

The plants only survive because of the continuous irrigation from the borewater supplies.

The Outback We found travelling generally was easy and there was much to see en route. As first-time visitors we were delighted to have the opportunity to get away from it all, which fitted in well with our son's idea of a holiday.

Despite the lure and fascination of the outback such trips do require care and travellers should be capable of dealing with the almost inevitable breakdowns. That point was driven home to me at our first involuntary stop. That’s when I realised that whatever needed doing, we had to do it.

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T There was absolutely no one else to change the wheel, deal with a blocked fuel line or whatever. Our friends also discovered this. We’d met them for a while at Mount Newman and then they were going to join up with us again at Marble Bar but when they became several hours overdue.

We reported this to the police, who told us if our friends hadn't appeared by the following day, they would alert southbound traffic. Fortunately, they did turn up before then. They’d been delayed by a breakdown they’d had to fix themselves.

The extraordinary low level of traffic away from towns meant that when we were stopped at the side of the road a passing vehicle always sought a sign that all was well. Only once during the whole journey did we see a Road Traffic Authority patrol which could offer assistance. That was on the coast road travelling south. Just for interest we logged traffic on one 300-mile stretch and recorded only 20 vehicles by the end of the day; ranging from a road train (a towing vehicle with three massive trailers) to a saloon car. I remember there was one 10-day stretch when we weren’t overtaken once.

Away from developed areas, the country is very sparsely populated and I can recall thinking one evening while we were parked up that there were probably no other people nearer than 50 miles from where we were sitting.

On another occasion we had camped for the night well off the road when a road train obviously saw our lights and gave us a serenade on his air horn! That was the only vehicle we saw until much later the next day.

Other Sights We met several caravanners who were taking advantage of their Australian long leave entitlement to make trips into Central Australia or to travel right round the country by the coast road. One young couple we met had reached the west coast after travelling from Brisbane on the east coast. Their journey included following the old northern cattle trails towing a 20ft caravan and with two very young children. They were contented that the trip would take them about six months.

South of Perth the countryside changed dramatically, mainly due to good rainfall and a more temperate climate. We spent hours motoring through the Karri tree forests, some of which are 200ft high. We visited

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C the famous Gloucester tree, one of three which are in use as forest lookout posts with a man-sized tree-house at the top. There is a staircase, if you can call it that, of iron spikes driven into the trunk and the public are permitted to climb it at will!

In that quarter are the Stirling Ranges with many scenic routes and holiday resorts. After returning to Narrogin we did a side trip to the dried up mineral lake of Lake Grace and to the extraordinary Wave Rock, a 50ft high concave rock formation which displays vertical striped THE NUMBERS markings.

3,600 miles (5.944km) Healthwise, we followed local advice by Used 320 gallons of fuel taking mineral and salt tablets and we had no Fuel cost $466 problems. Personally, I found Australian lager (average 32 cents a litre) too gassy for my liking and I managed to upset 1 new exhaust one local when I asked for a beer at room 3 punctures temperature!

(1 new tyre We enjoyed the trip so much that in 2 new inner tubes) subsequent years after I retired we did two more major caravan trips on the mainland; one up through the middle from Tasmania via the Adelaide area to Darwin on the north coast and back through the back lands of Queensland and the other on the east coast road to the far northeast and again back through inland Queensland.

We were fortunate because having two sons in Tasmania has meant that we have had the opportunity to visit so many places over there in the last 40 years.

73, Ted Jones G3EUE

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RALLIES SUMMER 2017 OCTOBER 21st – Carrickfergus Amateur Radio Club Rally Downshire Community School, Downshire Road, Carrickfergus BT38 7DA 21st – Yeovil ARC 71st Anniversary Sparkford Village Hall, Sparkford, Nr Yeovil, Somerset BA22 7ED 22nd – Galashiels Rally The Volunteer Hall, Galashiels TD1 3JX

NOVEMBER 5th – West London Radio & Electronics Show (Kempton Rally) Kempton Park Racecourse, Staines Road East, Sunbury, TW16 5AQ 5th – Bush Valley Radio Rally United Services Club, 8 Roe Mill Rd, Limavady BT49 9DF 11th – Fog on the Tyne Rally Whitehall Road Methodist Church Hall, Bensham, Gateshead NE8 4LH 12th – Great Northern Hamfest – Cancelled 18th – RADARS Traditional Radio Rally St Vincent de Paul’s, Caldershaw Rd, Norden, Rochdale OL12 7QR 19th – Plymouth Radio Club Radio Rally Harewood House, Ridgeway, Plympton, Plymouth PL7 2AS 19th – CATS Elecronics Radio Bazaar Oasis Acdemy Coulsdon, Homefield Road, Old Coulsdon CR5 1ES 26th – Bishop Auckland Radio Amateurs Club Rally Spennymoor Leisure Centre, 32 High Street, Spennymoor DL16 6DB

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CLUB CALENDAR OCTOBER 1st ........................... Monthly breakfast at the Lancing Harvester 4th ........................... AGM 11th ......................... Talk on the Rampion Windfarm 18th ......................... Junk Sale 25th ......................... Fox Hunt

NOVEMBER 1st ........................... Tea and Chat Night 5th ........................... Monthly breakfast at the Lancing Harvester 8th ........................... Talk - TBA 15th ......................... On the Air Evening 22nd ........................ Reducing RFI using loops and phase units 29th ......................... Annual Radio Related Quiz

DECEMBER 3rd ........................... Monthly breakfast at the Lancing Harvester 6th ........................... Tea and Chat Night 13th ......................... Christmas Party at the Old Tollgate Bramber 20th ......................... No Meeting (but there will be multiband nets) 27th ......................... No Meeting (but there will be multiband nets)

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