CUWS Termly Newsletter: Michaelmas 2009 G6UW from the Editor General Matters Welcome to a Rather Belated Michaelmas News- Letter

NEWS CUWS Termly Newsletter: Michaelmas 2009 G6UW From the Editor General Matters Welcome to a rather belated Michaelmas newsletter. I would first like to welcome our two new International Visitors committee members, Jordan Skittrall M0SKI as CUWS receives visits from quite a number of Chairman and Oliver Snowdon M0ZES as Junior foreign amateurs visiting the UK – everybody Treasurer. I’m also grateful to you all for putting from high-powered telecommunications regu- up with me as Chairman for the past two years lators to famous football stars. We are always and Secretary before that! keen to welcome them at the Maypole and take them out to the shack to help ease the pain of Every newsletter since 2007 has been longer being away from their own stations! than its predecessor, and this edition, covering the Society’s activities over the past four terms, First, news of two visitors who should really is no exception. As you peruse these pages, you have appeared in the last newsletter. On 12 June will find articles on DXpeditions spanning three 2008, Satya Gupta VU2SNN, the Chief Regula- continents, reports on no fewer than seven con- tory Advisor at BT Global Services SAARC, was in tests and news of 26 licence exam passes – and Cambridge for a conference and joined us at the that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Maypole for a drink.

I must highlight in particular the three excellent talks scheduled for later this term, the Morse classes which will continue for all who are interested, and the CRG Radio Loan Scheme – these all involve a significant contribution of time or money by those involved, and I really would encourage you to make the most of them.

Finally, those of you who have been following he progress of the New Shack Project will be ex- cited to read of our recent planning application success in the ‘Operating’ section, below.

Hugo Scott Whittle M0HSW Satya VU2SNN and Martin G3ZAY For more information on any events, or to contribute something for the next newsletter, please contact the secretary. Please also see the website for all the latest news and photos: www.g6uw.org Chairman: Jordan Skittrall M0SKI, Wolfson College,chairman at g6uw.org Secretary: Stephen Begley M0ZES, Queens’ College, spb46 at cam.ac.uk Junior Treasurer: Oliver Snowdon M0XOS, Churchill College, os281 at cam.ac.uk President: Martin Atherton G3ZAY,g3zay at btinternet.com Transmitting Secretary: Michael Wells G7VJR,michael at g7vjr.org

Cambridge University Wireless Society 20 January 2010 Page 2 Sir Martin Ryle On 8 October 2009 the Royal Mail issued a set of 10 stamps featuring ‘Eminent Britons’. One of the people featured is the Cambridge radio astronomer Sir Martin Ryle, who is better known to us as G3CY and a former President of CUWS. Ryle was Astronomer Royal for 10 years, a joint Nobel prize winner in 1974 and the first Director of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory at Lord’s Bridge. But perhaps his greatest claim to fame was that he was one of the few people in Cambridge to suffer TV interference from the CUWS station, when it was located near his house off Grange Road! For many years Ryle’s Tom M0TJH, Cezar YO8TLC and Martin G3ZAY influence could be heard in the radio astronomy offices at the Cavendish as Morse keys and Two days later, Cezar Lesanu YO8TLC, a PhD stu- oscillators were used to summon people to the dent in acoustics (noise cancellation) at Suceava phone – everyone had their own callsign and University, Romania, visited the shack and made was expected to recognize it when it was sent a few contacts as M/YO8TLC on CW. Tom M0TJH, over the public address system. Amazingly, the Rui M0RLM and Martin G3ZAY then took him to Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme ran a short feature lunch at Dry Drayton before showing him the claiming that nobody had heard of him and in- Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory site. terviewed one of his former PhD students who More recently, Giuliano Sandal I1SAF contact- tried to explain his numerous accomplishments. ed us to say that he would be visiting his son, who works in the Department of Chemistry, and CollegeARC would like to see something of the club while he Dominic M0BLF, a former CUWS Chairman, has was in Cambridge. On 20 April 2009, he and his recently been involved with the newly-launched friend Rubens IW1PDP were given a tour of the university radio club website www.CollegeARC. shack by Jordan M0SKI. He was suitably envious com. Those behind the project are keen to get of our ‘beautiful equipment and antenna farm’, more members outside the US, and both current and is now keen to apply for his UK licence and students and alumni are encouraged to join, to operate from here on future visits. share ‘best practice’ examples in running university club stations or just to contribute to the lively and varied fora. The founders give a brief outline of the site’s aims below.

‘CollegeARC has been established to provide a way for college, university, and all other higher education schools with a student club interested in amateur radio (ham radio) to interact with one another online. We have effectively created a community of campus stations which commu- nicates and collaborates together. The College Amateur Radio Club Association is here to show that amateur radio is capable of growing alongside and even with other modern technical hob- Jordan M0SKI and Giuliano I1SAF bies.’ Page 3 Friday 19 March 2010 Talks and Trips Understanding Radio Specifications – Ludovic IET Talks Laprade M0GDO The Cambridge Network of the Institution of Engineering and Technology hosts regular tech- Falkland Islands nical talks which are often of interest to CUWS Michael G7VJR and Martin G3ZAY will be on members. The evening lectures are free to at- the air from the Falkland Islands (IOTA SA-002) tend and membership of the IET is not required. from 21–29 January 2010 as VP8DMN and VP- Refreshments are served from half an hour be- 8DFK respectively. They will be following in the fore the scheduled start time of each talk. For footsteps of the ZD8UW DXpedition in January more information on forthcoming events, see 2009 (see the article later in the newsletter), the network’s website at www.iet-cambridge. travelling by MoD charter from Brize Norton, via org.uk. Ascension, to Mount Pleasant on East Falkland. I’m sure there are quite a few CUWS members CDARC Rally, Quiz and Talks for whom this will be a new one, so do take the opportunity to get out to the shack and add it The Cambridge and District Amateur Radio to your log. Club will be holding its annual rally on Sun- day 7 March 2010 at the Britten Arena, Wood Green Animal Shelter, King’s Bush Farm, London Sunspots and the Solar Dynamo Road, Godmanchester PE29 2NH. The rally al- – 4 February ways provides an excellent opportunity to pick The Society is pleased to announce a talk on so- up new and second-hand, often hard-to-find, lar physics by Professor Michael Proctor of the equipment from both commercial retailers and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics and Nonlinear Dy- private sellers. Follow the link from the CDARC namics group at DAMTP. The venue is, as usual, homepage at www.cdarc.co.uk for more infor- the Bateman Auditorium at Caius College; the mation about the rally as it becomes available. talk will take place at 7pm on 4 February 2010.

Shortly afterwards, on Friday 12 March 2010, is Professor Proctor will describe the physical and the annual CDARC quiz. This was won in 2006 periodic properties of sunspots, covering their and 2007 by CUWS teams, so it is high time we magnetic characteristics and average 22-year reclaimed our title! The quiz is always an enjoy- cycle. He will describe the knowledge of sur- able occasion, and I’m sure the club would ap- face and sub-surface solar behaviour gained preciate as many participants as possible. from helio-seismography and the latest thinking on the underlying mechanisms responsible for Members are also reminded that they are al- generating the intense toroidal magnetic fields ways welcome to attend CDARC talks, which implied by the periodic appearance of sunspot usually take place on Friday evenings at 8pm, pairs. at the Parkside Federation, Coleridge Commu- nity College, Radegund Road, Cambridge CB1 As always, the talk will be free, and non-mem- 3RJ. More details can be found on the Club Pro- bers are most welcome to attend. gramme & Events page of the CDARC website, but a couple of talks which may be of interest are mentioned below. HF Direction Finding– 25 February Friday 22 January 2010 On Thursday 25 February 2010, CUWS will wel- Home Brew Amateur Radio Astronomy – Pe- come Dr David Sadler of Roke Manor Research ter Howell M0DCV and Peter King G8KJP for a talk at 7pm in the Bateman Auditorium, Caius College. Page 4 Dr Sadler will review traditional approaches ingly so hard to cover one county effectively, to HF direction finding and then describe how and will discuss the engineering challenges of modern signal processing technology can be doing so reliably. deployed to greatly improve on the natural beamwidth of an antenna array; a technique More information about the local RAYNET group known as ‘superresolution’. together with details of some of its upcoming events can be found at www.cambridgeshire- He will describe a typical superresolution DF raynet.net. system including antenna array layouts and receivers, and outline the signal processing tech- RSGB Convention 2009 niques required to pin down the azimuth and CUWS rather stole the show at the latest RSGB elevation angles of arrival of one or more sig- Convention (the re-branded HF Convention), nals. He will also describe how adaptive beam- held once again at the nearby Wyboston Lakes forming can be applied to extract the individual Convention Centre. No fewer than six Society signals of interest. Furthermore, there will be members were involved in talks or presenta- some discussion on how knowledge of the struc- tions, with three more passing their Advanced ture of the ionosphere can allow the estimation licence exams at the event. of signal origin from a single DF site. Finally he will reflect on whether any of these techniques Tom M0TJH gave a presentation on behalf of the could be deployed by radio amateurs. ZD8UW team about the recent CUWS trip to As- cension Island; Ed M0TEK and Fergus M0NBL of Those who visited the Ofcom monitoring station CU Spaceflight gave a version of their talk ‘Su- at Baldock in 2006 may remember that much personics, RF Harmonics, Digital Electronics and of the equipment in use there was provided by Teddy Bears: A Near Space Adventure’, which Roke Manor Research, with the techniques Dr CUWS was privileged to hear last year; and Sadler will describe being used on a daily basis Michael G7VJR spoke about his recent DXpedi- to pinpoint the locations of illegal users of the tion to El Salvador with Bob MD0CCE. More in- HF spectrum. formation about all of these can be found later in this newsletter. Additionally, Martin G3ZAY RAYNET: The What, Why and chaired the IOTA session on the Saturday morn- How of Amateur Radio Emergen- ing and Don G3XTT ran the HF Contest Forum, cy Communications– 4 March as well as giving a presentation on the IOTA Con- test. CUWS member Robert Chipperfield M0VFC will give a talk on RAYNET, The Radio Amateurs’ DXpedition Reports on Website Emergency Network, on Thursday 4 March 2010. Again, the talk will be at 7pm in the Bate- The last newsletter announced the availability man Auditorium, Caius College. on the CUWS website of a recently-rediscovered Short Wave Magazine article about the 1966 Robert will talk briefly about the history of G6UW trip to the Isle of Man. Since then, three emergency communications provided by radio more SWM articles have been uploaded to the amateurs, but then move on to how things stand site – two about other trips to the Isle of Man, in today: when everyone has a mobile phone, the 1963 and 1967, and one about an expedition to blue light services have deployed Airwave, you Switzerland in 1972. These provide a fascinating can buy PMR446s for £5 from LIDL, and the In- insight into the history of the club and are well ternet is, surely, indestructible, what can radio worth a read. amateurs offer and to whom? He will address the question of why, when we routinely cover Please do get in touch if you have any old CUWS distances of thousands of miles on HF, it is seem- articles which are not yet on the website. Page 5 awaiting reply, but do not appear in any of his logs.

QSOs with G6UW 15 March 2003 14:10 HP9/F5PAC 21MHz SSB 15 June 2003 22:13 DL1SDN 14MHz SSB 30 September 2004 18:01 PY1/IV3NVN 28MHz SSB 2 October 2004 02:27 EA9GW 7MHz SSB 4 September 2007 11:13 F5HY 10MHz CW 4 September 2007 21:31 UR5LJD 7MHz CW 7 October 2007 10:36 PD1DX 28MHz SSB 22 June 2008 14:30 OE9WLJ 14MHz SSB (Op- erator at our end was ‘David’, with the comment ‘I am sure you passed your licence exam’. Was Three DXpedition reports on www.g6uw.org this a Foundation licence training QSO?) QSO with GU6UW Operating 28 November 1998 14:56 PY2WC 28MHz CW (Does anyone know who has the logs from this trip? It QSL Cards looks like CQWW CW.) Our QSL manager, Dominic M0BLF, has a large Dominic also needs to locate the scrap of paper number of QSL cards waiting for replies which that was used at G6UW/TF in 2005 to log QSOs refer to QSOs with G6UW on dates for which he made while setting up for the IOTA contest, as has no logs. Please could you check whether you he has 10 cards awaiting replies for this! have G6UW logs for any of the following. If you have electronic logs, please email them to Dom (preferably in ADIF format) at mail at domsmith. New Shack Project – Update co.uk; if they are paper, drop Dom an email and At the time of publication of the last newslet- he will discuss the particular QSOs involved. ter, the planning application for the new CUWS shack, Woop Woop III, had been submitted to 24 March 1990 1 QSO the South Cambridgeshire planning service and 14 September 2002 1 QSO we were awaiting a decision. Unfortunately, the 25 March 2003 1 QSO application was turned down in October 2008, 13 June 2003 1 QSO 7 August 2003 1 QSO because the current shack had been erected 5 October 2003 10 QSOs without permission and the ‘new’ building 24 October 2003 6 QSOs would be inappropriate use of green-belt land. 9 January 2005 1 QSO 15 January 2005 7 QSOs Thanks to the age of the existing building, how- 7 February 2005 1 QSO ever, we were entitled to apply for a Lawful De- 12 February 2005 1 QSO velopment Certificate to circumvent the green- 9 July 2005 2 QSOs belt restrictions for a future application. Last 16 July 2005 1 QSO July, we heard that the LDC had been granted, 30 July 2005 1 QSO allowing us to re-submit the original planning 16 August 2005 2 QSOs application (not forgetting to re-submit the £335 5 October 2005 1 QSO fee!). In October 2009, we received the exciting 5 February 2007 1 QSO news that planning permission for Woop Woop 24 February 2007 1 QSO III had finally been granted. 7 October 2007 3 QSOs The budget for the new shack is £4,700, a dif- Additionally, the following QSOs have cards ficult target for a small club to reach, even with Page 6 the several generous donations received from He is very happy to help you get off on the right current and past members. We therefore ap- footing, and understand how to copy and send plied to the Societies Syndicate for a grant of Morse code, as best he can. Please drop him a £1,500 to help make up the difference, and at note on michael at g7vjr.org if you would like to the end of the Easter term I was delighted to take up the code as a new year’s resolution. receive a cheque for the full amount.

The current funds for the project stand at Contests £3,700, so further donations will still be most gratefully received. Contact the Chairman if you CQWW DX SSB would like to make a contribution. This contest is without doubt the most important date on the CUWS contest calendar. In the We expect that the new shack will be installed last newsletter I reported that, thanks to a rea- over the coming summer vacation, and of course sonably serious attempt, M4A finished in sec- volunteers will be needed to assist with various ond place in England in the multi-single catego- stages of this operation. More details will follow ry in 2007; in fact, we were just third in England nearer the time. across all categories. CRG Radio Loan Scheme I’m delighted to announce that, thanks to even greater efforts in 2008, we edged into first place Some of our newer members may not be aware in England (multi-single), with an official score of the very generous Radio Loan Scheme run by of 3,896,655 (from 4,246,532 claimed). We the Cambridgeshire Repeater Group. This pro- were again in third place across all categories in vides the opportunity for any licensed student England. member of CUWS to borrow, free of charge, a brand-new handheld VHF / UHF radio (currently A team of 14 took part in the 2009 contest, and the Yaesu FT-60E) for the entirety of their time it was particularly good to see some new faces at Cambridge. The Group runs several voice re- among the operators. Our claimed score crept peaters across the county which are ideal for up once again, to 4,586,025. Sadly our old nem- making local QSOs with the handhelds. For the esis G6PZ was also working hard this year and DXers among you, EchoLink nodes are available has claimed 6,744,113, which means that we at GB3PY-R and MB7IGC-L which allow you to have probably lost our first place; the provision- connect via the Internet to repeaters across al results suggest we may be second. The log- the globe and work DX even from the middle of checking process for this contest is extremely Cambridge. protracted, and the official results will only be available at www.cq-amateur-radio.com/cqw- There really is nothing to lose by taking part whome.html just before the 2010 event. in this scheme (except perhaps a little of your spare time!), so why not contact Neil G4HUN on neil at g4hun.net to sign up?

Morse Classes Michael G7VJR continues to offer his excellent CW classes to those who are interested. Morse is not difficult to learn but he would like to stress that you will need to practise often and invest your time to get good at it. Sadly, your above- average IQ will not help you with CW! Page 7 CQWW WPX SSB RSGB Club Calls March 2009 saw a slightly more serious entry After missing the 2008 event, CUWS took part in than usual by M4A in this contest, with very suc- this short and relatively relaxed evening contest cessful results: our claimed score of 2,552,290 on 160m in November 2009. Robert M0VFC and places us second in the UK in the multi-single Tom M0TOC operated as G6UW, finishing 20th category (again led by G6PZ), a significant im- out of 105 entries (the 7th club station). The fi- provement on the 7,840 and last place achieved nal score was 1,217, not too far behind the win- in 2007. The official results will be available at ners with 1,554 – so we’ll certainly be in with a www.cqwpx.com/results.htm from 29 January chance next year. 2010.

IARU HF World Championship Licensing The past four terms at CUWS have seen a fan- The official results of the 2008 IARU contest have tastic number of passes in the UK licence exams. now been published. The five operators who I hope I have included everyone in the lists be- took part achieved a score of 515,846, which low; do get in touch if you think you have been placed M4A first in England in any category. left out unfairly! Congratulations to you all. Also worthy of mention is Dominic M0BLF who Foundation Licence came third in England in the single-operator, Ralph Barton, James Buckley, Jonathan Cor- mixed-mode, low power category with a score mack, Alan Cruickshank M3ZFU, Adam Greig of 64,570. M0RND, Matthew Henderson, Iain Waugh M0WGH, Peter Whitely M3ZFV RSGB IOTA The last edition of the newsletter gave the pro- Intermediate Licence visional score and a predicted ranking for the Ralph Barton, James Buckley, Matilde Castan- M4A entry in the 2008 RSGB IOTA contest. Un- heira 2E0CAO, Jonathan Cormack, Edward fortunately the prediction was a little optimistic, Cree M3TBK, Adam Greig M0RND, Iain Waugh but the CUWS team still finished 20th out of 99 M0WGH in the world in the multi-operator, island cate- Advanced Licence gory with an official score of 2,852,826. Vin Shen Ban, Robert Chipperfield M0VFC, Two other CUWS members who took part in the Tom Corker M0TOC, Curon Wyn Davies contest were Dominic M0BLF, who finished 74th M0WZX, Adam Greig M0RND, Henry Hallam out of 85 in the single-operator, mixed-mode, M0HMH, Ed Moore M0TEK, Fergus Noble island category and John G3LAS as SM/G3LAS, M0NBL, Ben Sims M0GQP, Oliver Snowdon who came 40th out of 145 in the single-opera- M0XOS, Iain Waugh M0WGH tor, SSB, island section. CUWS offers Foundation and Intermediate li- There was no official club entry to the 2009 con- cence exams and practicals at almost any time, test, but again a couple of members appear on and Advanced exams on set dates throughout the score tables. John G3LAS, this time as SM5/ the year, all subject to three weeks’ notice. How- G3LAS (from the island of Fogdo off the East ever, the RSGB is updating its question banks in coast of Sweden), reached 34th place out of 99 the first two weeks of February, so no exams stations in the single-operator, mixed-mode, is- can take place until the beginning of March un- land category. Jordan M0SKI came 80th of 163 less they have already been scheduled. The next in single-operator, SSB, island. available Advanced exam is on Wednesday 21 April 2009. If you’d like to take an exam, contact Martin G3ZAY on g3zay at btinternet.com. Page 8 CQWW DX SSB 2008 Dominic Smith M0BLF reports on a very successful contest back in Michaelmas 2008

The Cambridge University Wireless Society’s annual entry in the CQWW DX SSB contest using the special contest callsign M4A has two principal aims. Not only do we aim to maximize our score, but we also aim to encourage newly-licensed and inexperienced students by introducing them to contesting at a fairly well-equipped station alongside more experienced contesters. This is the reason that we always have very large numbers of operators and 2008 was no exception, with thirteen people on the rota, of which seven were current students.

We are especially grateful to Mark G4AXX for providing use of his 85-foot mobile tower, to Andy G4KNO for the loan of the Granta Contest Group’s 80m slopers and to Martin G3ZAY for supplying a four-element 20m monobander to mount on Mark’s tower. Our increased score for 2008 (4.2M claimed, 3.9M checked; up from 2.7M claimed, 2.4M checked in 2007) was probably mainly due to this extra equipment and indeed our 20m QSO total was up over 50%.

On the downside, it was disappointing not to have good runs on 15m because of propagation and we made less than half of 2007’s QSO total on that band. Our more experienced operators were, however, able to take advantage of the prevailing conditions, with one 7 QSOs/minute minute and ten 6 QSOs/minute minutes. These were rates never achieved in recent years at M4A.

After losing many points in 2007 due to the M/S band-change rule not being understood by all of our operators, I am very pleased to note that we had a clean log in this regard for 2008.

We were also fortunate that (in the south-east of England at least!) the weather for the contest was much better than in recent years and the winds gusted less strongly than initially forecast. This allowed us to have the towers slightly higher than usual. Our commiserations to those in the north of England who were affected by storms.

Hugo M0HSW operating the mult station and Dominic M0BLF on the run Page 9 The only problem encountered can, as usual, be put down to the fact that the station is rather hastily as- sembled on Friday evening. Such is the nature of a student club! We did not have a gender-changer for the serial CAT control lead (whose idea was it to use a male on the back of the FT-1000MP?!) and so rig control on the mult station was done through more leads than would otherwise have been necessary. This, of course, proved susceptible to RF, meaning that the mult occasionally lost rig-control.

The quick installation of the station also meant that ergonomics could certainly have been improved. As it was, the mult operator had to lean past the run operator to change antennas and the run operator had to reach across the mult operator to change direction on the 80m slopers, which was less than ideal. We also found ourselves lacking a PTT footswitch on the mult station, and so the ‘dah’ side of a CW paddle was wired in for the purpose. 80m slopers and 20m monobander

I (M0BLF) am grateful to Robert M0VFC who was an observer rather than an official operator but who made a couple of QSOs for me on the mult station in the final hour after I lost my voice! Apolo- gies to those I worked while sounding very husky.

Finally, thanks to everyone for the QSOs!

Log Summary Band QSOs CQ Zones DXCCs Dupes Points Average Points per QSO 160m 90 6 48 2 98 1.09 80m 679 19 86 10 1165 1.72 40m 597 30 110 10 1256 2.10 20m 1398 37 133 21 3269 2.34 15m 352 32 109 3 888 2.52 10m 19 5 19 0 22 1.16 Totals 3135 129 505 46 6698 2.14 Total score: 4,246,532

Dupes are not included in QSO counts nor average calculations

Operators: DL5RB, G3ZAY, G4AXX, G4EAG, G7VJR, M0BBB, M0BLF, M0DEG, M0FFX, M0HSW, M0MLG, M0RLM, M0SCH

Comments: A very successful contest for a large team of operators of various experience levels from the Cambridge University Wireless Society. For once this year, we had no major problems and even the weather was kinder than in previous years. A pity that 15m wasn’t anywhere near as good as last year. Thanks for all the QSOs. Page 10 CQWW DX SSB 2009

40m four-square and 80m phased array

Robert M0VFC assembles the 20m monobander

60ft and 85ft towers – essential for any contest station! A coffee machine

Log Summary Band QSOs CQ Zones DXCCs 160m 70 11 50 80m 738 18 89 40m 822 34 117 20m 1486 34 120 15m 387 34 121 10m 63 16 61 Totals 3566 147 558 Total score: 4,586,025

Operators: 2E0WNT, G3ZAY, G4EAG, G4AXX, G7VJR, M0BLF, M0DEG, M0HSW, M0MLG, M0SCH, M0SKI, M0VFC, M0ZES, M3TBK

Comments: The annual entry in CQWW from M4A (Cambridge University) has two aims: to improve our score from the previous year and to introduce new students to contesting (hence our very long operator list!).

Both of these objectives were fulfilled yet again in 2009, so it was a successful contest for us. There were no major problems this year, although we were hindered by a lack of aerials which meant that we could not have the radios on 15m and 10m at the same time. Thanks to all who contacted us. Page 11 The Hebrides and Monachs Martin Atherton G3ZAY accompanied last summer’s combined SOTA and IOTA trip to this remote corner of the British Isles

A CUWS summer trip to the Hebrides took place in late August 2008. Martin G3ZAY, Rui M0RLM, Tom M0FFX, and Markiyan Samborskyy headed off via an overnight stay with G3WGV in Cumbria and the usual stopping place at the Flora MacDonald hostel on Skye. First port of call in the Heb- rides was the Gatliff hostel on Berneray from which we did a short SOTA to the one-point summit of Marrival on North Uist. The weather was wet and windy and the group quickly moved over to Harris to meet up with Donald Wilkie, skipper of the yacht Annag which we had chartered for an attempt to reach the Monach Islands. The Annag was familiar to Martin as Donald had conveyed one of the first ever CUWS IOTA trips to St Kilda and the Flannan Islands over 25 years ago. Donald was helped by another local yachtsman, confusingly also called Donald, as none of the CUWS team had the necessary crewing experience.

After a night at the Am Bothan hostel in Leverburgh we boarded the Annag at 09:00 BST on Wednes- day 27th and were soon motoring through the Sound of Harris and around Berneray. The wind was strong and was from dead ahead for most of our course so we only managed about four knots smashing into the waves. As we rounded the north-west corner of North Uist we were able to get a bit of sail up and were soon making six knots as Annag headed south into the sheltered bay on the north side of the two largest islands, Ceann Ear and Ceann Iar. We were ashore by 16:00 and had a temporary station on the beach while Donald decided if the weather was suitable for an overnight stay. When he confirmed that it was, we set up camp next to the ruins of a house that had been abandoned in the middle of the last century and put up some more permanent antennas. We in- tended to have two 100W stations but the FT-100 proved very temperamental (due, we discovered later, to a dodgy ribbon connector on one of the boards) so the second station had to struggle with 5W from an FT-817. The main station was Martin’s elderly FT-890 which has been round the world with him several times.

The team returned to the yacht for dinner (probably not the best way to maximize QSOs but Donald was keen for a group meal and we hadn’t taken food ashore anyway), but had some trouble get- ting back to camp in the dark. The yacht was anchored about 100 yards off the beach and Donald was able to see the outlines of the tops of the sand dunes every few seconds when the beam from a nearby lighthouse swept over them. This was enough to drop us by ZODIAC in roughly the right place and we eventually tracked down the tents.

We set off back to Harris at lunchtime on Thursday 28th, reaching Leverburgh by late afternoon. Donald and Donald then had a lengthy sail to take the Annag some 70 miles back to Stornoway. We made 694 QSOs including 189 on CW.

Other SOTA activations included Toddun on North Harris, close to the Rhenigidale youth hostel, and Ben Lawers on the north side of Loch Tay. Our final night was at the modern hostel at Crianlarich and we had a good drive back to Cambridge on Sunday 31st. The team and skipper on board the yacht Annag Page 12 Ascension Island A major CUWS DXpedition to the South Atlantic took place at the beginning of 2009. Gordon Rolland G3USR recounts the details of our visit to this unusual destination

Would you like to come to Ascension Island as a guest operator? The email invitation was like un- expected DX coming out of thin air on an otherwise empty band – exciting, somewhat ethereal and you are not quite sure what it is that you may have heard! A few milliseconds later a decision was made – yes, please.

Seven months later, on Hogmanay evening 2008, along with five CUWS members, I boarded a Min- istry of Defence chartered Boeing 767-300 at RAF Brize Norton for the 10-hour flight to Ascension. The original schedule allowed us to spend New Year’s Day at home, however MOD operational con- siderations necessitated short notice rescheduling to the last day of 2008. As MOD service flights are ‘dry’, Happy New Year was limited to flight attendants in festive party hats and a glass of lemon squash. Our sacrifice for the cause of amateur radio knows no bounds!

Ascension Island Ascension is located just south of the equator in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is a British Overseas Territory which, together with St Helena and Tristan da Cunha, forms a single territorial grouping under the sovereignty of the British Crown. The group of islands is presided over by a Governor who is resident on St Helena. He is represented on Ascension by an Administrator. The island is some 750 miles north-west of St Helena and covers an area of 34 square miles, whilst the nearest point of Africa is Liberia which is nearly 1,000 miles to the north-east.

The weather is warm all the year round, rising to a maximum of 30°C during the months of January, February and March. The breeze of the south-east trade winds moderates these temperatures and rainfall is variable and hard to predict. The island is volcanic with its lower slopes and western side made up of volcanic ash with little vegetation. Green Mountain, which rises to a height of 2,817 feet at the centre of the island, is lush and green and was our target QTH. On a previous visit to the island in 2005, Martin G3ZAY had inspected a potentially suitable location (used by a previous UK group) with accommodation available to rent. Arrangements had since been made to take over Garden Cottage, which is located high up on the side of Green Mountain. This promised a clear take-off to the north-west through to north-east, corresponding broadly to North America, the UK, Europe, Asiatic Russia and Japan.

The island provides an operational home to numerous well-known names in world-wide radio and technology including the BBC World Service, Cable & Wireless and the European Space Agency which operates an Ariane rocket tracking station. The US-owned Ascension Wideawake airfield is a significant transit base to the Falklands and provides an emergency NASA Shut- tle landing place. There is also a USAF base providing a tracking and Green Mountain with QTH just below the right-hand saddle communications facility. Ascension Page 13 is clearly important strategically and there is a requirement for all visitors to obtain an Ascension Island entry permit in advance, which is the equivalent of a travel visa.

Besides radio and despite its small size there is a lot to do on the island. There are numerous walks and the opportunity to go scuba diving and play a wide variety of sports. These include football, tennis, squash and golf, albeit on officially one of the worst golf courses in the world! Sea fishing is also very popular. More information about the island can be found at www.ascension-island.gov.ac.

A Much-Needed Entity? From a radio point of view, although not in the top 100 most wanted entities, we believed that ZD8 would be quite popular on the bands, particularly 160 and 80 metres. There are four local radio amateurs on Ascension, although they are not terribly active as they are there to work! There have been numerous DXpeditions to the island in recent years by visitors, however a high level of demand undoubtedly still remains. Probably the most active station is Ian ZD8I, who reports frequent difficulties in making ‘normal QSOs’ due to enthusiastic breakers and he requests ‘no cluster spots’ for him (see Ian’s website at www.zd8i.net)!

The Club Log system (written by Michael G7VJR) suggested that SSB was wanted more than CW and that demand was likely to be highest on the LF bands. From an IOTA point of view, the database reports AF-003 as required by just 13% of participants. In this case, however, our experience proved this to be an unreliable indicator, a vast underestimate.

In the event, the pile-ups were huge, particularly on SSB where they exceeded most operators’ previous experience. The most enthusiastic QSOs and those generating most comment were on 160 and 80 metres as predicted. There was no perceptible difference between modes.

Let’s Get Set Up! We took almost all of our equipment with us including fibreglass poles for our main antennas which were wire verticals. On arrival at the mountain QTH we first set up an inverted L on an 18-metre pole for 160 and 80 metres. This was complemented by many radials of assorted lengths laid out in a star shape directly on the ground. In addition, we had two shorter poles of 10 metres in length which were utilized for 40 to 10 metres with either a one-quarter or a three-quarters wavelength vertical wire. Thus the vertical element varied between about 10 and 32 feet. Again, a mat of individual wire radials was used with each of these shorter poles.

Our verticals were omnidirectional which, although contributing lower gain than a Yagi, avoided any need for rotation whatever the propagation and provided low-angle radiation. During the week we also fabricated an 80-metre wire dipole which was cut for the 75-metre / SSB DX part of the band. This was strung up on a further fibreglass pole and provided some flexibility in operation during night times on 80m. With its centre at 25 feet and the Verticals at Garden Cottage Page 14 ends almost on the ground it was, in one sense, rather low, but as it was on the edge of a 1,000-foot drop its take-off was superb. In addition, we made up a 20-metre half-wave dipole for the ‘CQZL / CQVK’ portable challenge attempted during the week (see below).

Equipment We had four transceivers in all. An Elecraft K3, a Yaesu FT-897D and a Yaesu FT-450 were used to run three concurrent stations. We also had a Yaesu FT-890 available as a spare. In addition, we used Heil headsets and Heil footswitches for SSB operation. Power came from switched-mode mains supplies including two excellent quiet and light Watson Power-Mites.

With concurrent operations it was important to minimize the possibility of inter-station interference as well as to reject any overloading signals from the BBC Relay Station antennas which were clearly visible from our site. This was addressed by single-band Dunestar band-pass filters and they proved very effective. The key here was to remember to swap filters when bands were changed. This was a little more complicated when operating split. RF on the ‘wrong’ band would quickly de- stroy the ‘right’ filter! Fortunately there was only one casualty and Dunestar have supplied replace- ment parts free of charge.

Interestingly, on the LF bands we found that the antenna analyser could not function owing to strong signals from the local broadcasters. With just a small signal of its own, the analyser was swamped by high voltages on the antennas. However, with the insertion of an I.C.E. 402X filter we were able to restore the balance on these bands. Many thanks to Chris G3SVL for the loan of the I.C.E. filter.

How Was It for You? Propagation was initially only fair as we began operation on Thursday, New Year’s Day. However, by the Saturday it appeared that conditions were improving and by Monday we were flying! On HF, Michael G7VJR spent a number of late nights on 160m and notched up over 1,450 CW QSOs. Over the week-end we rapidly came to understand the local timing of propagation openings on HF and this assisted our operator scheduling, not only to ensure that we took full advantage of the conditions but also to give each operator a ‘fair share’ of the action.

We operated for almost exactly eight whole days, shutting down at 13:45 on Friday 9 January. The main QSO statistics are given at the end of this article.

There are some interesting features hidden in these statistics:

• We made over 17,900 contacts in total and 17,100 after removing duplicates, giving a dupli- cate rate of 4.5%, about par for an efficient DXpedition.

• 48% of all contacts were on CW, 52% on SSB. We did not work any other modes.

• We had 566 QSOs with 279 unique UK calls giving an average of 2.0 band slots per UK callsign.

This is consistent with the general feeling we had that the path to UK from ZD8 is not that easy. UK QSOs comprised just 3.2% of our overall total. Of the 566, 274 (48.4%) were SSB and 292 (51.6%) were CW. There were few UK stations with BIG signals; however, they were very tenacious. Just one M3, Barry M3EOL, made a contact, on 20 metres SSB. Five intermediate licensees made contacts on 20 and 17 metres SSB and intrepid CUWS member Dominic M0BLF made a 17-metre QSO with 40 watts to a mobile whip and filmed the whole thing for YouTube! Page 15 And How Was It for Us? Based on pragmatic observation, our typical DX day resolved itself into a succession of regularly available band slots. These complemented local propagation to the nearest countries in South America and Africa, both of which were just over 1,000 miles away. Both of these continents, however, have relatively low populations of active amateurs and hence the proportion of our contacts with them was only 4% of all contacts.

From early morning around 06:30, as the MUF rose and the greyline moved across Ascension, 20 metres opened to Europe and Japan. Sometimes 17 also opened by 09:00 or occasionally earlier.

By mid morning 20 metres was fading out as the equatorial morning sun affected the earth’s at- mosphere and HF absorption set in. However, as the morning progressed, 20 was replaced by 15 metres as the absorption did not reach 21MHz.

17 and 15-metre openings often continued throughout the day.

By late afternoon 20m became available again, opening first to Europe and later to North America. This sometimes continued until well into the evening, fading out at around 21:00.

On 30 metres, CW was available most of the day, closing briefly in the middle of the night.

As night fell and HF bands progressively closed, 40, 80 and later 160 metres came into their own. European stations on 160 could sometimes be heard from shortly before sunset, though on 160 and 80, static crashes measuring up to 40dB over S9 were sometimes problematic. We wanted to try diversity reception using the 80m dipole and the 160m vertical on the Elecraft K3, but this was impractical owing to a lack of a second Elecraft receiver card. Had we had the space, a Beverage would have been truly welcome on both of these bands.

40m tended to seem to dip around 02:00 until after 04:00 when propagation resumed – or perhaps it was just an indication of who was awake in accessible countries.

04:00 to 07:00 on 40m was often very lively, with first Eu- rope and then North America and Japan becoming available.

We listened on 12 metres each day: propagation was available from around 17:30 until about 19:00 when the band closed. Although South- ern Europe was worked, no propagation to the UK was encountered.

Although we listened and called on 10 each day, no propagation was detected. We had no permission or antennas for 6 metres. Simon G4EAG inspects the museum’s radio treasures Page 16 So, What Else Did We Do? As we were self-catering, most days required us to leave Green Mountain and visit the Solomons Supermarket in the capital Georgetown. These trips were often extended for other things that must be done whilst on Ascension.

We visited Fort Hayes and the Ascension Island Heritage Soci- ety Museum and Gallery – the latter, given the island’s historical commercial occupiers, included many interesting electronic items. Bonetta Cemetery at Comfortless Cove

We went swimming in the Two Boats Village Community Pool and on another day swam in the heavy surf at English Bay and tarried at the poignant 19th century sailors’ Bonetta Cemetery at Comfortless Cove.

We visited the BBC’s Atlantic Relay Station (which operates the BBC World Service to Africa) where we marvelled at both the legacy Marconi manually tuned PAs and the extraordinary new-generation technology with automatically and continuously tuned 250 kilowatt finals. No wonder the complete station input power requirements are some two megawatts! We learned later that they sell 250kW transmission time to third parties for under £200 per hour. If a suitable TX / RX changeo- ver relay could be found the next expedition might be REALLY loud!

We toured the island’s oil-fired power station which is adjacent to the BBC Relay site. This power station also provides its waste heat to several adjacent desalination plants. These use a mix of dis- tillation and osmosis methods and ensure that the whole island has a reliable, ongoing and pure source of fresh water besides its natural springs.

On another day the European Space Agency allowed us to visit their Ariane rocket tracking station and we also investi- gated a disused NASA tracking station originally set up in the 1960s to support the United States moon landing projects.

One evening after dinner we went to Long Beach just outside Georgetown to try to see the island’s renowned turtles. These come ashore from Janu- ary to May to lay their eggs in Electronically-controlled valve PA at the BBC Atlantic Relay Station holes dug in the sand. We were Page 17 in luck, seeing a number of turtles coming ashore and witnessing others departing to start their 1,000-mile journey back to their normal habitat off the east coast of Brazil. Amazing!

The island has lots of flora and fauna, much of which we encountered. Be- sides turtles, Ascension’s other wild- life includes land crabs, feral sheep from the days of ‘come ashore and Long Beach turtle re-entering the sea after laying her eggs catch your own fresh meat’(!) and feral donkeys (which were originally used to carry water). The rabbits, mice and rats on the island are regarded as a menace and there are numerous rat bait boxes and rabbit traps beside the paths and trails of Green Mountain.

A popular pastime was following the many so-called ‘letterbox’ walks on Ascension, several of which traverse Green Mountain. These mountain paths give access to historical features from the 18th and 19th centuries and earlier, such as water catchments, secluded officers’ cottages and barracks, as well as offering sensational views across the island!

The ‘CQZL / CQVK’ Portable Challenge Prior to leaving the UK and as a result of prior DXpedition publicity, Michael G7VJR had been in contact with a number of New Zealand stations who were keen for QSOs with Ascension. The radio short path from ZD8 to ZL is broadly in a direction which was not readily accessible at the cottage on Green Mountain. By the Thurs- Ascension Island flora and fauna day of our stay we had worked just three ZLs, all on SSB, with two on 40 and one on 20 metres. These were almost certainly long-path contacts, around 15,000 miles. So, ever up for a challenge, we arranged to take a portable rig to the highest car-accessible point on the mountain with a clear take-off to the ZL / VK short path – at 06:30 one misty morning!

Web-based publicity during our DXpe- dition ensured that ZL operators were listening for us and we made six further contacts on 20 metres with 100 watts to a wire dipole in a 30-minute greyline opening. This was six more than we had feared and was an interesting diversion. Thank you, Europe and Japan, for standing by whilst we called. Unfortunately and surprisingly no VK stations were worked or heard during our whole visit. The ‘CQZL / CQVK’ Portable Challenge Page 18 DXpedition Lessons Learnt Every DXpedition has its own special characteristics which provide unique experience and ZD8UW was no exception. The three most significant were:

• Non-radio activities are useful. Making use of gaps in usable propagation to take time to do other things on the island was time well spent. This contributed a lot to the overall enjoyment of the DXpedition as well as allowing time for relaxation and team building.

• Adopting a different approach often pays dividends. The use of vertical antennas in the mountainside situation on Ascension provided a straightforward way of optimizing time on the air by being omnidirectional and reducing antenna complexity and setup time.

• Non-familiar hardware provides opportunities. The range of equipment we used allowed those with less experience to learn about the features of various rigs; for example the Yaesu FT-450, which was the only transceiver with a voice memory. The meagre 10-second memory duration and awkward setup routines were eventually mastered, allowing us to use the record- ing features for repeated CQ calls without undue effort. This facilitated early contacts when band opening times were uncertain.

Conclusion How was the ascension into heav- en? Fantastic! I hope that we gave you some fun and perhaps a new one too on the air. Thanks to all of those whom we worked and to those who spread the word on the cluster network. I hope that you have enjoyed hearing about our DXpedition and gaining insight into some of the background and behind-the-scenes activities. We would like to express our gratitude to CDXC for the Club’s donation towards the DXpedition costs. From all at ZD8UW, now QRT, thank you! G4EAG, G3ZAY, M0HSW, M0TJH, G7VJR and G3USR

QSO Statistics Band SSB CW Total QSOs As % DXCCs 160m 0 (0.00%) 1452 (100%) 1452 8.11% 70 80m 521 (30.6%) 1181 (69.4%) 1702 9.50% 58 40m 1825 (61.7%) 1133 (38.3%) 2958 16.5% 80 30m 0 (0.00%) 1661 (100%) 1661 9.27% 61 20m 3139 (72.8%) 1170 (27.2%) 4309 24.1% 100 17m 2286 (68.5%) 1051 (31.5%) 3337 18.6% 87 15m 1240 (61.8%) 765 (38.2%) 2005 11.2% 80 12m 297 (60.6%) 193 (39.4%) 490 2.74% 27 Totals 9308 (52.0%) 8606 (48.0%) 17914 100 125 Page 19 CU Spaceflight Talk Hugo Scott Whittle M0HSW summarizes a fascinating talk last Lent term

Thursday 5 March 2009 saw the first collaboration between CUWS and the Caius Engineering -So ciety, in the shape of a jointly-arranged talk by CU Spaceflight, intriguingly entitled ‘Supersonics, RF Harmonics, Digital Electronics and Teddy Bears’. The event had been widely advertised through the Science Society, Engineering Society, Caius Students’ Union and the Engineering Department. Thanks to this promotion, and no doubt the national media coverage which the team’s recent Ted- dies in Space project had received, there was a good turnout for the talk at the Bateman Audito- rium in Caius.

The three speakers, Henry M0HMH, Ed M0TEK and Fergus M0NBL did an excellent job of combining an overview of the Spaceflight project as a whole (whose eventual aim is to break the 100km altitude barrier and get a rocket, launched from a high-altitude balloon, into space for under £1,000) with plenty of detail on the radio-related aspects of ballooning and rocketry. The presenters gave an introduction to various methods of digital transmission popular in the amateur radio world (phase-shift keying, frequency-shift keying and multi-frequency-shift keying), discussed possible systems for decoding these modes and highlighted some of their shortcomings, as well as the difficulties of selecting a suitable frequency for balloon-ground communications for flights which could take their payload as far away as the US. They also encouraged CUWS members to get involved with the project by receiving, decoding and reporting the regular latitude / longitude / altitude reports transmitted during the balloon test flights.

They then proceeded to more advanced topics and, in particular, ways in which inexpensive off- the-shelf equipment can be modified to meet their demanding requirements. For example, they have used a cheap, relatively low-frequency Direct Digital Synthesis IC with a band-pass filter in place of the usual low-pass anti-imaging filter to generate the UHF carrier required for their radio downlink. The basics of spread-spectrum transmission and chipping codes were also covered and the team showed some very impressive results they had obtained by decoding in software the baseband output of a commercial GPS receiver IC, allowing them to circumvent the CoCom limits built into fully-integrated receivers (which prevent tracking at altitudes greater than 60,000ft or speeds above 1,000kts).

Between them, the three present- Supersonics, RF Harmonics, ers managed to cover everything Digital Electronics and Teddy Bears in the talk’s ambitious title, aided by plenty of light-hearted, hand- A Cambridge University Wireless Society drawn diagrams and a large collec- & Caius Engineering Society talk by tion of impressive-looking bits of CU Spaceflight rocket scattered around the room Henry Hallam MØHMH behind them. Those who didn’t Ed Moore MØTEK Fergus Noble MØNBL make it to the talk (and those who Thursday 5 March just want to refresh their memo- 7.00pm ries) might like to take a look at the pdf of the slides, available for Bateman Auditorium, download from www.srcf.ucam. Caius College org/~cuspaceflight/wiki/lib/exe/ CUWS Free entry – All welcome G6UW fetch.php?media=cusf_caius.pdf. Page 20 Bletchley Park

Another CUWS trip took place on 8 March 2009 to the ever-popular World War Two code- breaking centre, Bletchley Park. Five members toured the various historical reconstructions in the house and grounds, as well as enjoying an excellent afternoon lecture on teleprinter decrypts.

International Space Station Ed Moore M0TEK describes a thrilling and emotional evening at a local Cambridge school

On the back of the Teddies in Space project, Parkside school was selected for a live Amateur Radio linkup with the International Space Station, to ask questions of astronaut Charles Simonyi.

ARISS came along to perform the actual link-up. Howard Long G6LVB arrived with the primary kit (2m quads on azimuth-elevation rotators with software control and 100W uplink) helped by Ciaran Morgan M0XTD, and Carlos Eavis G0AKI brought GB4FUN as a backup and to teach in (very, very nice: like NASA Mission Control, as sponsored by Icom, in a trailer). Jim Heck G3WGM of AMSAT joined us in the evening.

They school hall was filled with children and parents. The kids gave a short presentation on the teddy bears; I gave one from a CU spaceflight perspective and also showed videos of the Soyuz launch taken by our sponsor, who had attended the launch the previous week. Then the ARISS guys took over at about 5.30pm for a 6.02 overpass. They gave a good talk, showed a video of life on board the ISS, and at about 5.57 switched to the world map view with the ISS path, ISS and ISS line-of-sight circle. Page 21 When the circle just passed over Cambridge, everyone went deathly silent. There was just the crackle of noise floor over the PA, and every 10 or 15 seconds Carl Eavis would call the ISS (OR4ISS). There was no reply for about 90 seconds; sweat was pouring down faces (I had to remind the school’s fire marshal to breathe). Then, out of nowhere, a faint crackle of contact from Charles Simonyi. The feeling was quite visceral – a silent gasp. Mums who had come along just to humour their children had hands over their mouths and a couple near me had a tear in their eyes. I really felt it too, which I wasn’t expecting. This all sounds a bit trite and dramatic, but it was quite an -at mosphere. If I could liken it to anything, it would be that moment in Apollo 13 after re-entry where everyone is desperately listening to noise, praying to hear something, and the sudden relief when it comes through. For a generation of adults somewhat anæsthetized to the excitement of human spaceflight, it was quite something to see on their faces the realization of what was happening – this crackly contact from the frontier of human civilization.

The kids then got to ask about 15 questions before it settled over the horizon again. And that was that. It was a really fun evening all in all, and the ARISS guys were all great with the kids. GB4FUN is a wonderful piece of kit. The new one is so clean and cable-less that I noticed some of the mums commenting that they were surprised at how tidy it can be, and that letting their kids or husbands have a radio in the house to talk to satellites or whatever needn’t involve taking over a room in the way they might have feared. Carlos said this was quite deliberate, and born out of ‘we’re not having all those cables and boxes in the house’ comments that the previous iteration of GB4FUN sometimes got from reluctant would-be station managers.

I’m as enthused as the kids really. Amazing what you can do with your licence.

El Salvador Michael Wells G7VJR and Bob Barden MD0CCE undertook a short but ambitious DXpedition as YS1G in May 2009. Among the statistics below are at least six CUWS members!

QSO Statistics Band SSB CW Total QSOs As % DXCCs 160m 0 (0.00%) 130 (100%) 130 1.39% 17 80m 0 (0.00%) 620 (100%) 620 6.65% 45 40m 306 (16.4%) 1562 (83.6%) 1868 20.0% 66 30m 0 (0.00%) 1557 (100%) 1557 16.7% 60 20m 534 (21.6%) 1933 (78.4%) 2467 26.4% 82 17m 282 (19.9%) 1138 (80.1%) 1420 15.2% 60 15m 182 (26.3%) 509 (73.7%) 691 7.41% 51 12m 129 (29.9%) 302 (70.1%) 431 4.62% 25 10m 27 (18.6%) 118 (81.4%) 145 1.55% 12 Totals 1460 (15.7%) 7869 (84.3%) 9329 100% 97 We operated for just under 6 days and there are 4,874 unique callsigns in the log. 10 people contacted us on 9 bands; 19 on 8 bands; 47 on 7 bands.

Breakdown by continent: NA 4,220 (45.2%), EU 3,594 (38.5%), AS 1,164 (12.5%), SA 193 (2.07%), AF 92 (0.99%), OC 66 (0.71%). Page 22 SOTA in Snowdonia Dominic M0BLF sums up an enjoyable, if somewhat bizarre, SOTA trip last summer

A group of operators from CUWS went to Snowdonia over the weekend of 8–9 August 2009 for a Summits on the Air activation. The group consisted of Martin G3ZAY, Rui M0RLM, Christian M0SCH, Jordan M0SKI, Tom M0TJH, Rob M0VFC, Matilde 2E0CAO and Dominic M0BLF.

We left Cambridge on the Friday evening and set up our tents at the Gwern Gof Uchaf campsite at the foot of Tryfan just after dusk. On the Saturday morning, after a leisurely start, we walked up Tryfan. We took a slightly challenging route, which involved a bit of a scramble towards the end, during which we met Rick M0RCP and his 16-year-old son Thomas M3OOL who were also activating the mountain that day. They told us that Richard G3CWI and Roger MW0IDX had already been up there earlier in the morning, too! Fortunately, we would not be interfering with the other operators as they were planning to use 2m, whilst we had equipment for 80m and also 40m.

On the top of the mountain we set up and started making the requisite four QSOs each for the activation to count for SOTA. Whilst we were doing this, we were surprised to see a group of Extreme Ironers arrive, one of whom was dressed in a pink Lycra suit! M0SCH invited them to come and iron next to our antenna, which they duly did. Shortly after this, they dressed in black tie to do some more ironing between the Adam and Eve rocks on the summit.

We descended the mountain shortly after lunchtime, leaving Rui and Matilde to finish operating on Tryfan whilst the rest of us headed to Glyder Fawr. There were two options for the ascent of Glyder Fach, which we had to climb to be able to access Glyder Fawr along the ridge. The most obvious route looked as though it required a long and difficult scramble, so instead we took a slightly longer path to avoid this. It didn’t really work as the alternative turned out to involve a scramble as well. On the way up, we met G3CWI and MW0IDX, who were descending. G3CWI took the opportunity to ask whether we were going fishing, pretending not to recognize the fibreglass antenna support (which he sells). Eventually, we reached Glyder Fawr, where M0RCP and M3OOL were just packing up their equipment. The descent took a little longer than we were expecting with the result that we got to the bottom with very little time to spare to get to the pub for dinner, where Rui and Matilde were already waiting for us.

The following day, we decided to go to an easier mountain – more of a hill in comparison – called Tal Y Fan, towards the north coast. Our departure was again quite slow as we were tired from the previous day. The route to Tal Y Fan looked quite simple on the map but as we got closer to the destination, the road deteriorated to a track. With Martin’s car beeping from low fuel, he and Matilde went to get petrol, whilst the rest of us headed to the hills. For six people to make four QSOs each, even on a combina- tion of 80m, 2m and 70cm, took a long time, and we were about half an hour late for our rendez-vous at the pub in a nearby village, where we had a quick drink before returning to Cambridge.

Thanks to Martin G3ZAY and Rob M0VFC for driving and to everyone who contacted us. Extreme Ironing under the 80m dipole Page 23 Saint Pierre... Martin Atherton G3ZAY headed off to Canada at the end of September 2009

Following the success of the ZD8UW trip, the team’s thoughts turned to another accessible but rare Atlantic island where there would be good prospects for LF QSOs into Europe and North America. This time the target was to be the DXCC entity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon (FP), which lies about 20 miles south of Newfoundland. Martin G3ZAY had visited briefly many years ago and was aware of the layout of the place. The small rocky island of St Pierre is the site of the main fishing harbour, the airport, the only town (ca. 6,000 inhabitants) and very little else. Close by is the much larger island of Miquelon-Langlade with only 600 inhabitants, no decent port and just a small airstrip.

From a radio point of view the motel in the village of Miquelon is by far the best place to operate. The motel is on the beach only yards from the surf and the take-off is good to excellent in all direc- tions. In addition the motel manager, Patricia, is keen to welcome amateur radio expeditions. She has provided a store room which is now well stocked with coax, wire, rope, some poles and a Step- pIR vertical (left by Nigel G3TXF and Roger G3SXW several years ago).

Unfortunately, flight connections are not particularly easy from Europe. The islands are served only by Air Saint-Pierre which flies two or three times per week from St John’s, Sydney, Halifax and Mon- treal. Transfer to Miquelon requires a second flight (or ferry), and London to Miquelon requires at least one overnight stay somewhere along the route.

The final CUWS team was rather smaller than planned as Michael G7VJR had to drop out due to work commitments and other possible team members proved unavailable in the chosen time win- dow at the end of September 2009. In the end, Martin G3ZAY flew out on Air Canada to Halifax and Tim M0TDG met up with him there after routing via New York. They then picked up the Air Saint- Pierre ATR 42 turboprop for the 75-minute flight to St Pierre and connected the following morning to Miquelon on the small inter-island 10-seater. Luggage proved less of a problem than they had feared and despite being quite a few kilos over the allowance they were not charged any extra fees.

On arrival at Miquelon a 12m Spiderbeam pole was erected on the beach and a 10m pole placed on the other side of the motel. Each was used as the support for quarter-wave verticals (and on 80m an inverted L). Radials were quarter-waves at the lowest frequency to be used on each pole and were simply left on the ground. On the radio side they used an FT-450 and Martin’s new Elecraft K3. No linears were taken so power was limited to 100W. Despite this power level, pile-ups proved to be enormous and the signal on 80m into the UK was excellent – though local noise in FP meant the guys couldn’t hear any of the weaker stations calling on 80m.

The QSO total for FP/M0TDG and FP/G3ZAY was around 5,000 in approximately 72 hours of available on-air time. Martin and Tim would like to thank Patricia for her hospitality and assistance with their expedition and would strongly recommend the Motel Miquelon (Maxotel) to other in- tending DXpeditioners. Page 24 ...and Miquelon Tim Grant M0TDG gives his own account of the FP DXpedition

In April this year, Martin G3ZAY and I visited the Visalia DX Convention. During our travels, we were discussing the possibility of a DXpedition. One location that Martin had been considering for some time was the Saint Pierre and Miquelon islands in the North Atlantic, off the coast of Newfound- land, Canada. As the year progressed, plans began to firm up and we settled on the last week of September. Various people expressed interest in the trip but unfortunately the timings didn’t work and in the end it was only Martin and I who would make the trip.

Saint Pierre and Miquelon are a French overseas collectivity that has been owned by France since 1814. Before then, the French and British had been regularly exchanging ownership since the end of the 17th century. The islands were originally occupied seasonally, then all year round as a base for Basque and Breton fishermen. Fishing, and the economy along with it, has been in slow decline since the start of the 20th century, although there was a brief boom during the US prohibition years when the islands became prominent bases for smuggling liquor. The islands are now more depend- ent on tourism and agriculture for their economy. Today, the island of Saint Pierre is inhabited by around 6,000 people whilst Miquelon has around 600 full-time residents. Langlade is only inhabited by one full-time resident although there are also several holiday homes there.

Martin and I met in Halifax, Canada on Wednesday 23 September. Unfortunately, it is not possible to reach Miquelon Island in one day from London (from where Martin had arrived) so we would need to stop over in Saint Pierre for a night before continuing on to Miquelon. Whilst there is no difference between the two islands from either a DXCC or IOTA perspective, there are no suitable operating sites on Saint Pierre that have power and accommodation available. On Miquelon, however, is the Maxotel (Motel Miquelon), a low-lying hotel that has been used by many radio amateurs and has a reasonable stock of antenna equipment that has been left over the years.

Arriving late at night into Saint Pierre after the hour-long flight from Halifax, we transferred to a hostel on the island for the night. The next morning dawned with high winds and squally show- ers. The short flight across to Miquelon was in a small, twin-engine, 10-seater plane so there was some concern as to whether the flight would go ahead or not. Arriving at the airport, our worries were put at ease and the 15-minute hop went without incident. However, once we had disembarked and the plane had returned to Saint Pierre, the airport closed and there were no more flights that day.

We were picked up from the airport by the Maxotel owner and taken to the hotel. Air Saint-Pierre ATR 42 turboprop on the apron at Miquelon Page 25 The hotel is located on the seafront very close to salt water to the north-east and with no obstruc- tions behind before the sea out to the west. This gave fantastic take-off to Europe, the Far East and North America. Our apartment was on the end of one of the wings of the building allowing us to operate without disturbing other guests. There were two rooms, allowing two stations to run without interfering with each other.

In worsening conditions, we set up two fibreglass poles to use as vertical antennas. We were set back a few times with the poles collapsing on the first afternoon but a few modifications resolved this and I had a signal on the air just before lunch. Very soon, Martin was on the air too. I was operating SSB whilst Martin did CW. This was a pattern that we continued for the rest of the trip with each of us remaining exclusively on our chosen mode. Conditions on the bands were good with us both quickly building pile-ups on 20m and 30m.

After the first two days of appalling weather, the third dawned bright and clear, if cold and windy. We took a break from operating to take a tour of the island and take some photos. We went up the hill above the hotel on the very northern tip of Miquelon and could instantly see why the hotel is such a good operating location. We then drove down to Langlade where many residents of Saint Pierre have their holiday homes. None of the houses on this part of the island have either electricity or running water.

We were originally due to leave Miquelon Island early on the Monday morning and then connect to a flight to Halifax within half an hour. We decided that this was an unrealistically short connection time, especially with the chance of there being bad weather and the airport closing, so we took the decision to leave on the Sunday night and spend overnight in Saint Pierre before returning to Canada.

After about 77 hours of operation, we closed the stations down, tidied up and packed for our flights home. Conditions on the bands had been reasonable across the entire weekend with even one or two sunspots making an appearance after such a long absence. Only on the second day of operation did we have times when we struggled to make contacts. 17m, 20m and 30m were all good during the day and both 20m and 40m provided reasonable runs at night. SSB was not used late at night so as not to disturb our neigh- bours in the adjacent apartment. 80m was plagued by S9 noise that we could not get to the bottom of but a few contacts were managed on both phone and CW. Be- tween the two stations, we made about 4,970 QSOs across five bands.

Our two flights to take us back to Halifax were un- eventful save for the treat of a low-level flight around Miquelon in beautiful sunny weather on our flight from Saint Pierre back to Canada. Outside the Motel Miquelon Page 26 McNutt’s Island Martin Atherton G3ZAY couldn’t resist a short detour on his way home to revisit another North American IOTA

After returning to Halifax from St Pierre I parted company with Tim M0TDG and headed south-west on a two and a half hour drive to the town of Shelburne. This is the jumping off point for McNutt’s Island (IOTA NA-126) in the mouth of Shelburne Harbour. I was picked up by Ken and Sherri Taylor in their tour boat Brown Eyed Girl and was dropped off at Government Wharf on McNutt’s about seven miles away.

I was to stay at New Jerusalem Farm – a heritage property which has been extensively repaired and modernized by its new owners, a retired couple, formerly Methodist Church ministers, from Washington DC. Greg met me at the quay with his ‘chariot’, a small wagon towed by his four-wheel ATV, and I loaded my bags on board. We bounced about a mile up the lane to the farmhouse where I was given a choice of a room in the main building overlooking the orchard or a private cabin on the waterfront facing south. Given the amount of antenna space in the orchard I chose the house and soon erected a 10m fibreglass pole holding a quarter-wave vertical for 20m. On the radio side I had my Elecraft K3 with a WinKey keyer and a Toshiba netbook running WinTest. Power came from the house’s 110V AC supply derived from solar panels, a wind generator and, when all else failed, a petrol generator.

Conditions were good and once I’d spotted myself using the WiFi / satellite Internet connection I had a huge pile-up which ran on for most of the afternoon and evening with occasional band changes to 30 and 40 metres. Meal breaks were mandatory given Greg’s reputation as a chef and my ‘QRX 30 minutes’ overran to an hour or more for lunch and dinner. Anne, Greg’s partner, had been busy searching for IOTA pages on the Internet and was full of questions about island DXpedi- tioning. You can find her blog at http://novascotiaisland.blogspot.com – click on the ‘radio’ topic to find her description of my visit.

The following morning conditions were much slower so Greg gave me the keys to his four-wheel ATV and I set off to explore the island’s main track down to the abandoned Cape Roseway lighthouse and the WW2 gun site. I made a few more QSOs before lunch and was ready to head back to Shelburne around 14:00.

Coincidentally, my first operation from McNutt’s about 20 years ago was from the same property when I was the guest of its previous owner, Eliza- beth Hyde. Elizabeth had no electricity at the house so on that occasion I used a car battery rented from a garage on the mainland.

The QSO total was 780, mainly CW, in about 16 hours of operating. Page 27 Ilha da Culatra Martin Atherton G3ZAY gives an account of the second CUWS trip to southern Portugal

It is becoming almost a tradition for a CUWS team to descend on the Algarve coastal islands EU-145 for a casual, end of summer, weekend DXpedition. This year Martin G3ZAY, Dominic M0BLF, Tom M0TJH and Rui M0RLM (also licensed as CT1JXY) arrived in Faro as guests of former CUWS Chair- man (and current newsletter editor) Hugo M0HSW and his parents. Their villa is in Santa Bárbara de Nexe – about a 15-minute drive from Faro airport and extremely convenient for the islands.

Before the team’s arrival, Hugo had arranged with Alves, a local fisherman, for us to use his beach hut (and mains electricity) on Barreta (aka Deserta) Island as our QTH. Alves’ only condition was that we should join him and his friends for a few beers and grilled sardines, so we weren’t quite sure how many QSOs would be made! All looked good until the IOTA Manager, Roger G3KMA, chanced to view the Google Earth images of Barreta and realized that the island no longer meets the IOTA 200-metre separation criterion at its western end and may need to be deleted from the list.

Roger asked us to activate Culatra Island instead – the only remaining definite qualifier for EU-145. But of course we had no QTH lined up there so had to pay a quick visit just before the weekend to see if somewhere suitable could be found. Culatra is a low-lying sand dune with four or five hun- dred houses grouped into three small villages. We chose to visit the westernmost village known as Farol and boarded a water taxi from Olhão for the 10-minute run to the island.

We got lucky almost immediately when the doctor in charge of the first aid post offered us an empty cabin with 220V mains electricity and space for antennas. A local restaurant also agreed to let us operate from one of their tables but in the end we decided that the noise of SSB QSOs might not be welcome to their customers and settled for the first aid post.

M0HSW, M0BLF and G3ZAY struggle with the waves Page 28 We had just one station Martin Atherton CT7/G3ZAY/P on the Saturday which Dominic Smith CT7/MØBLF/P meant that the off-duty Hugo Scott Whittle CT7/MØHSW/P operators were free to Rui Lima Matos CT1JXY/P visit the excellent beach Thomas Heritage CT7/MØTJH/P and enjoy a few beers in each of the cafes. The radio was Martin’s FT-450 and the antenna was a simple 20m inverted V with the centre around 8m above ground – sup- ported by a fibreglass Ilha da Culatra 2009 Summer DXpedition fishing pole. EU-145 Loc: IM66BX Cambridge University Wireless Society

On Sunday we decided to put an additional 40m station on the beach (using the car battery from the 2008 trip) but, just as everything was ready to go, the beach manager / concessionaire turned up and demanded to know what we thought we were doing on his private beach. After a lengthy explanation involving the magic words ‘Cambridge University’ he mellowed and allowed the team to operate from his own hut – even helping us to re-erect the antenna and equipping us with a table and sunshade. Sadly 40m was almost dead so this ideal QTH had to be abandoned and the thwarted operators had to pass the remaining time in the beachfront bars and going swimming.

We returned to the mainland each evening either to enjoy the Scott Whittle hospitality or sample the local restaurants. We even managed to get invited to a local horse fair for an evening firmly off the tourist circuit.

Fans of video blogs can find M0BLF’s daily reports online at www.domsmith.co.uk/amateur-radio/ dxpeditions/2009/ct/#video – they are well worth a look.

How many QSOs were made? It hardly seems important now and EU-145 isn’t especially rare but I believe we managed around 750 on CW and SSB as CT7/ home calls and CT1JXY.

There might be a return trip in 2010 and we might consider renting some accommodation on the island so that we can operate over Saturday night when propagation conditions are much better. Or maybe we’ll leave that overnight stuff to another group…

The team would particularly like to thank Hugo and his parents Nina and Henry for their magnificent hos- Nina, Henry, M0BLF, M0TJH, G3ZAY, M0HSW and M0RLM pitality in Santa Bárbara.