Good afternoon,
A collective reply to all of your e-mail's.
Firstly sincere thanks to all of the stations who came on, particularly
those who called but we could not hear.
Reports were G3UNT 599plus, G3XAQ 599, MoBMU 579, G3KEV 579. Nothing
heard from Adrian G4GDR or Dave G3YMC as we had a 10 Kw broadcast station at
Hoo breaking through into our DC receiver. The receiver was an NE602 mixer
oscillator feeding an LM386 and the transmitter was a two transistor,
BC108/BFY51 driving an IRF510 with 10w output. This was link coupled, 16
turns, into a series atu using 300 turns of wire on a 1.5 inch plastic pipe
and 1000pf series tuning. Two delta kites were used to lift the wire at 45
degrees and the counterpoise was 200 feet of wire laying on the beach and
going into the Thames.
The battery supply was an alarm system gel battery and the whole lot was
forced marched from my house down the hill and across the marsh to Egypt Bay
which is almost opposite Canvey Island in the mouth of the Thames. It is
around an hour in both directions in the blazing sun.
Putting the wire into the river (salt water) caused the aerial current to
fall. Using the wire as a true counterpoise laying on the beach gave a
significant increase in current. We are convinced we would copy all stations
with a better receiver. Geoff G3YVF has returned to base to modify the
rig.
Thanks again, we will repeat the exercise as soon as we can.
We saw no sign of any Ofcom inspectors despite informing the local Field
Office........
73 all Colin G3VTT & Geoff
G3YVF