Dale and I took a drive up to Wentwood forest north of Magor, Newport. A small detour was made via the chip shop on the way. We tried to get to the SOTA point in Wentwood, but it is gated so only accessible by foot. One day we will have to lug some gear over there and try and get an activation.
The spot (see pic below) we chose was about 600 yards or so from a commercial mast which proved to be a nightmare. Much QRM was to be had on 2m, and made it impossible to use. The CADARS 2m net initially gathered on 145.375 at around 7:30pm but the QRM made it impossible. One minute I would hear Chris (2w0ogy) 5/7 then the QRM would wipe him totally with S9 noise.
So, we all moved over to GB3RT, the 70cms Fusion/FM repeater in Cwmbran, maintained and operated by CADARS. The usual banter was exchanged and the net ended somewhere around 8:30pm. The following stations partook in the net : 2w0ogy, gw0fgo, mw0yac, mw6mun, mw6fnv, mw6lga (myself). We were running a portable callsign as we had placed the radial-less mobile NR7900 antenna from Diamond, on top of a 8m fibreglass pole and velcro’ed it to the landrover ladder. A barrel so239 connector was used in the antenna and a 6m patch cable was used to connect to the normal so239 fitting on the truck. Essentially an antenna on an extension cable. It seemed to work quite well, and quite a few 70cm and 2m repeaters were heard. A recording from a Sunderland repeater is below heard on 433.175.000 at 6:30pm. Such a repeater might be GB3TS but obviously these two chaps with Geordie accents could be on any other repeater from the RB07 band. If it was the Sunderland GB3TS repeater, then wow, that was some serious skip/lift !!!! Unfortunately we didn’t the signal long enough to get a ident. I’ll have to try and analyse the audio to see if a tone is stored in it, but I am not sure.
Analysis is in 🙂 indeed it is the Sunderland repeater GB3TS. Great stuff !
After the CADARS net ended, we put up an 8m length of cable and ran some HF. A couple of contacts were made into Italy and we even interrupted GW4BLE (Steve) from his DX chasing (sorry Steve). A massive pile up was heard with people trying to get a Japan station but we were unsuccessful and he faded away in the space of 30 or so minutes.
We pulled all the plugs around 10:30pm and headed home.
73
Well done yet again facing the weir wolves and demons in Wentwood.
cheers Chris. I’ve just made a rather interesting video about that Sunderland repeater, and have just contacted their facebook group with the link. Rather cool and the tone in the audio matches theirs. 229 miles on 70cms !