ATU in Action
My local club C&DARS (Chesham & District Amateur Radio Society) recently took part in the RSGB HF SSB Field Day and worked a total of 434 stations in 33 DXCC’s across the 24 hours. Band conditions weren’t great but we did get Saudi Arabia (HZ1FI/P) in the log and heard some VK’s early morning on 20m.
We had a team of five operators including myself (M0JCQ), Jeremy (G3XZG), Phil (MoNVS), Terry (G0VFW) and Matt (M1DTG). We were responsible for running the station over the weekend using our club call G3MDG/P. Fun was had by all despite the usual field day catastrophes, sweat and tears.
We made a video capturing some of the action:
Phil M0NVS Warming up the HF Bands
Antenna at Sunset
Phil M0NVS enjoying Sunday morning sunshine like a lizzard
The action was too much for Matt M1DTG
The weather was relatively kind during the daytime but the temperature at night fell below freezing, resulting in me waking up on Sunday morning to find ice had formed on his tent door overnight!
Ice on tent – it’s only September!
My local club also took part, and it was my first field day. I think we had slightly warmer weather though!
Unfortunately, the band conditions were far from perfect, although we did manage 503 QSOs.
Thanks for your comment Robert. Band conditions were rubbish weren’t they!
What was your club’s callsign? I’ll have a look in the log, we must have worked 150-200 DL stations over the weekend 🙂
73 James M0JCQ
Hi James,
We were active as DL0GZ/P – I was only operating for a short period on Sunday morning, as I am not usually a contester, but I am sure one of our Ops would have worked you at some point.
I haven’t seen our log or the final results yet!
Hi Robert,
I’ve just looked in our log and we did work you on Sunday morning at 10:00 on 40m! I’m just learning about contesting this year, but I do enjoy these events and it always impresses me how large the EU ham community is during events like HF Field Day 🙂