I find I need a weekly visit to the hill to sit in the Landrover and radio the night away. Mind you HF has been a bit better over the last couple of weeks with a few dxpecditions on and the Spanish Miguel Cervantes stations to chase.

The 50Mhz UKAC, for one, was incident free. The K3S worked a treat and nothing blew up.

I got moaned at for having a big signal - that I thought was the idea of it?

Anyway the scores on the doors were:

Contest      :50MHz UKAC 27 Sep
Submitted    :Tue Sep 27 23:11:27 2016 UTC
Deadline     :Tue 4-Oct-2016 23:59 UTC
Section      :AR (UKAC Restricted)
IARU-Section :MULTI
Group        :Triple B ARCG
QSOs         :143
DXCCs        :7
WWLs         :22
UK WWLs      :19
Mults        :41

Best for me so far but there were loads of high scores around

I made up the top loaded inverted L antenna that I circulated plans for and eventually got it up a tree.

It is quite hard to see



Which is good.

Here is the 5’ loading inductor closer up



And if you look carefully you can see the end fed wire and the top band one heading off to another tree





I had my first TB QSO with Andy YGB. Not DX but it works. dead easy to make as well at no cost.



Give it a go.

Reeling from the success with the DK7 beam I set that up for the UKAC on Tuesday.

Also for the first time the K3S and the transverter. I have previously used the transverter with the KX3 bit was keen to see how the K3S performed. But it was not to be. Being power pole mad I have all the gear set up to be plugged into power poles but what I had failed to cater for was failing memory and plugged the transverter into the 24v supply for the rotator (makes it go faster)

Smoke and game over for transverting.

Luckily I had the 991 in the car so ran that on 40W. Conditions were brilliant and you will remember I keep saying that MP is no good to the east, well on Tuesday it was. Brilliant evening with 800,000 ish points.




When I got back i took the transverter apart and it seems that there is a capacitor and resistor across the power inputs to deal with reverse polarity. Richard at MLS is getting a replacement capacitor and we will see is anything else is broke. Fingers crossed.

Back from the UKAC this weekend has been about two things.

Putting up the top band antenna and chasing some DX. Conditions have been marginal but A5A Bhutan was bagged on Friday with low power and some cunning and a quick LOTQ QSL from Gibraltar saw the LOTW total go to 150. I must get the cards certified to push that up a bit!




Then to top it I had a QSL with Grecia YV1YLY who used to be YY1YLY (great call) , a serious contester and always has pile ups so I have never been able to get through. Showing us here how to tune a beam.

Field Day was a success even if the weather was a bit iffy.

We worked 600 stations on HF with the 4 element StepIr setup. Not world beating but good contacts into China and all around the world.

I also tried out the DK7ZB designed portable beam on backpackers with the K3s and transverter running from a car battery with the battery booster. That antenna works very well. So well, in fact, I took it out on the UKAC. But that’s another story






The “portable “ hilltoppers setup.




Considering if the wind is going to do something nasty to the StepIr. It didn’t , just blew some of the tent away.



At night it was down to the Hexbeam and the K3 to give me and Uri new entities to Iraq.