NFD 2014 – G5BK/P

We (M0PCB, M0GEJ, G4ENA and G4ENZ) assembled at 1300 local with seemingly plenty of time before the start to get everything set up. The mast and 265 foot doublet went up in around 20 minutes, the tent soon followed. All going well so far, with over 2 hours to go it all seemed a bit too easy. The station went together fine, an Elecraft KX3 and laptop. In fact we had between us 3x KX3 radios so we were well covered!

The options for ATU were different to previous years and for some reason we had great trouble matching the big doublet on a number of bands. At the last minute we decided to swap for a 125 foot doublet and a 1:1 common mode choke fed with coax to the KX3 and used the internal ATU. We could get a reasonable match on all bands from 80m to 10m. As it happened we didn’t end up operating late enough to make use of 160m.

When I kicked off at 1545z 10m was open so we concentrated there for double points, moving gradually down the bands as the afternoon and evening progressed. With only half an hour left of the planned 6 hours 80m didn’t provide as many contacts as we had hoped for and the last to leave site were Chloe M0GEJ and myself at around 2300z. We took the station home for the night and I was back on site just before 0600z on Sunday morning to set back up.

Peter G4ENA started off on Sunday morning on 40m and hopped around to 20m and 15m with a few excursions to 10m. Likewise Martin G4ENZ followed on hopping around 20m, 15m and 10m. I took over for the last couple of hours and spent a little while on 15m then most of the last hour on 10m. Even running just 5W it was satisfying to be able to CQ and have plenty of callers.

The stats are as follows:

The stress was minimal beyond the antenna troubles in the set-up phase. During the weekend we only suffered one or two spots of the wet stuff, and were rather pleased that the thunderstorm on Saturday passed a few miles south of us. We sat in the sunshine watching the storm pass listening to the distant rumbles of Thunder. We even managed to pack the station and tent up in the dry before retiring to the pub for some fine ale and a late lunch.