Monday 24 April 2017

A portable multi-band End-Fed Half Wave (EFHW) antenna for 40-10m

The camping washing line spool used for the antenna wire.
A few people have asked about the 30m antenna Norfolk Amateur Radio Club used for its International Marconi Day (IMD) operations at Caister Lifeboat this year.

Ten Megahertz (30m) turned out to be a useful band for us, allowing CW contact after CW contact, despite poor conditions after a geomagnetic storm and a K index of five.

The antenna we used was a portable 40-10m multi-band end-fed half wave (EFHW) with a 49:1 Unun using an FT240-43 toroid.

It used a wire 9m vertically metres up a fishing pole and then about 5.8m out.

The novel thing was that I only built it the day before and it uses a Coghlan camping washing line spool with the string taken off and about 21m of wire wound onto it.

Caister Marconi radio station makes nearly 200 contacts



Right: Rodney G0CBO and Kim G4WUG contact another other 
radio amateur with Morse code from GB0CMS at 
Caister Lifeboat on International Marconi Day.





















Members of the Norfolk Amateur Radio Club (NARC) managed to contact 193 other radio amateurs in 31 different countries on Saturday 22nd April 2017 when they took part in the annual International Marconi Day at the Caister Lifeboat Visitor Centre to mark the inventor's birthday.

Using the call GB0CMS and a mixture of Morse code, telephony (speech) and data (PSK), contacts were made with other radio amateurs across the UK, Europe, Australia and the USA.

Notable contacts were with other special Marconi stations in the UK, Italy, and Ireland.

NARC ran the all-day special event station at Caister Lifeboat to commemorate the village's original Marconi Wireless Station, which was established at Caister in 1900. The station was in a house in the High Street known as Pretoria Villa and its original purpose was to communicate with ships in the North Sea and the Cross Sands lightship.

On Saturday, the closest to Guglielmo Marconi's birthday, stations around the world are set up at sites with historical links to the inventor's work. These include Poldhu in England; Cape Cod Massachusetts; Glace Bay, Nova Scotia; Villa Griffone, Bologna, Italy and many others.

Visitors to the station including many other local radio amateurs and members of the public.

Steve G0KYA, who organised the event, said: “Conditions weren’t brilliant due to the effects of a solar coronal hole, but we started off by talking to Ian VK3MO, an amateur near Melbourne, Australia on SSB.

“We then went on to make contacts with other radio enthusiasts all over Europe and as far as North Carolina, USA using speech, PSK and Morse code.

“New this year was CW operation on 30m, which proved very effective with long runs into Europe using a new prototype end fed half wave antenna (EFHW). We also had the club IC-7300 running on 40m, which worked well but highlighted a few things we need to check, such as the overload light flashing when the other station was on 30m and we tried to work on 20m.”

“My thanks to everyone who helped on the day and to to Caister Lifeboat for letting us set up the station.”

The equipment used was 100W from an Icom IC-756 Pro3 (30/20m) and Icom IC-7300 (40m). Antennas were a W5GI dipole on 40m and G0KYA's monoband end-fed half-wave verticals for HF.

Thursday 6 April 2017

International Marconi Day, April 22 2017


Saturday 22nd April 2017 is International Marconi Day when stations around the world celebrate the birthday of Guglielmo Marconi.

It is also a good opportunity for you to gain a very nice certificate. All you have to do is work 15 award stations and send in a log extract - you don't need QSL cards.

I shall be helping to run GB0CMS again this year at Caister Lifeboat in Norfolk, UK.

There is short video that looks at the equipment the club used to make 165 contacts in 24 countries on Saturday 30 April 2011. And another for the 2012 event when we made more than 500 contacts.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z41FLKaT7eY and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8ZRW0q6SyI

To help UK stations work the requisite number of IMD stations I have prepared some HF propagation predictions. You can view these online.

You can find out more about IMD at: http://gx4crc.com/gb4imd/