As you know by now the Bouvet Expedition didn’t make it…but we did.

After months of planning we arrived at the Lizard and set up station. That me SKA and AJM. It definitely was a three man operation getting the antennas up in that wind.


We had the hex beam, DX commander (which worked very well and stood up to all the Cornish coast could throw at it with the upper guy ring modification) and the 60’ high 80m vertical.




Despite not working Bouvet we did manage New Zealand on 80m SSB with I consider a success .

Much less of a success was the UKAC where we did terribly despite putting 59 signals into IO93. Nobody points to Cornwall or possibly those that do have poor receive capability.



anyway there you have it, A nice break and there was some wildlife to see on the antennas as well



Meanwhile Chris G8AJM was down at Lands End also working ZL on 80 with the Club mast and spider beam



If you are considering wireless cottage for a holiday then it is recommended. For radio operation i’m not so sure as we suffered from very high, intermittent noise on 80, 40 and 20 which when it was happening put pay to any operation at all. We could not track it down to the buildings and never found out the source.

Cheers from the Burnham Beeches team

The testing went well for the new 80m vertical to be deployed in the Bouvet chase down in Cornwall.
It is an 18m spiderpole with a 1/4 wave element wound round it an loads of radials. It was spot on for the bottom of the band which is where we will work them if at all, I suspect

With 80w and at the bottom of a called we had no problems working the states so there is hope.

Thanks to SUR for spending time helping me with this one and providing the Welsh gales to test it’s stability.

Or something like that…

From 29/1 to 10/2 2018 we will be QRV at Marconi's original radio station on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall UK with the sole aim of working the guys on Bouvet from this place of historic radio significance.

We - Me Charlie GØSKA and Mrs TDZ & SKA with a remote station further down of G8AJM and Mrs AJM are planning a mini UK expedition to get the best possible spot to work Bouvet in February next year.

I have booked Marconi’s Wireless Cottage on the Lizard which was where the first transatlantic cable came ashore and Mr M made some of his first transmissions with the spark transmitter.

We will be taking the K3/Expert combination and have specific permission from the National Trust for a mini 4 aerial antenna farm which will allow us to work on 6-80m. 
If the weather permits I have been working on a full size 1/4 wave kite aerial on 160m that we will deploy given half a chance.


Apart from the historic significance the site is located to give us the best chance of getting to the other side of the world missing as much of France and Spain as possible.


We will be operating personal calls MØTDZ & GØSKA
As well as the Marconi Lizard Club Call GB2GLD so give us a shout for the chance to work this bit of radio history.
G8AJM will be stationed further to the west. In fact as far west as you can get so we will have shotgun coverage from the south west of the UK fingers crossed.
UPDATES during the stay will be on the BLOG

THINGIVERSE

All downloadable for free on Thingiverse

Here is another printing project for the CrankIr

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2481451

6M Beam

I have been chatting with my pal Terry about what to do for the 6m UKAC next year (when the Nordic scoring system has been sensibly been adopted) and my thoughts turned to making a more portable solution to my 5 ele LFA. More portable in the sense of the time it takes to put it together.

So taking clues from the 2M ones that I have made and written about before I am going to have a go at a 6 or 7 ele DK7ZB version. So the question was to make some stronger spacers that the elements can clip into. Cue the new 3D printer.

I started with the driven element box which is going to be something like this with a core built in to wind a choke on.




And for a first attempt it turned out pretty well





I will probably have a go at printing a bit to hold the driven elements in as well.

This is the idea for the other passive element clamps which will have a 10mm pipe clamp on the top




more as it happens !!