Dear All.

I have just returned from GM. Did anyone else notice peculiar conditions on
Wednesday especially with shortish range signals greatly enhanced? G4GVC and
G6RO were 599 in New Galloway, about 6dB better than I usually get them, but
long distance signals seemed no better than usual. Later in the week signals
were back to normal.

The antenna was still up from Christmas and I was able to operate from
Wednesday afternoon. It has three 20mtr horizontal wires as top-loading,
18mtrs high with the down lead being in a sideways V shape to avoid the
house. I can get 3A up the antenna with 900W of RF so the earth leaves
something to be desired! It consists of three wire fences connected back to
the shack by 100mtrs of wire lying on the ground, not high-tech but it
works. This time I ran a wire across the road to another fence and I think
it helped a bit.

Very little QRS activity was seen. I worked Rik on DFCW (I wish I had
modified my tx and updated my old version of QRS when I worked you Rik!) and
ON4ZK. I reckon I could have worked them both on CW. The only other signal I
saw was G3LDO.

On Friday afternoon the weather was good so I took a trip to the sea-side
and flew the kite North of Stranraer near Milleur Point. I worked G6RO,
MM0ALM (S9+30dB!), G3KEV, HB9DCE, DJ5BV, OZ8NJ, G4GVC and G6NB. I was only
operating for just over an hour, unannounced, on a weekday afternoon. I
doubt if I would have worked anyone at-all if I'd been on topband!
LF is the place to be.

On Saturday morning I was getting a lovely 559 copy from Ossi OE5ODL but he
took such a long time getting Steve's callsign right ( that's a-l-G! ) that
he faded down before I called. I couldn't net onto his frequency because my
synthesiser in that tx doesn't go down that far, so I missed him. I think
that would have been a first unless Ossi has worked MM0ALM.

The rest of Saturday I was plagued with a local noise which was quite weak
by Birmingham standards but took the edge of all but the loudest signals,
sorry to John G3BDQ for making a meal of our QSO.......
I put up a large receiving loop between two trees and that worked very well,
then the noise went off!
Worked G3OLB, SM6PXJ, EI0CF (my local!) and OG5UFO before setting off home.

73, Dave G(M)3YXM(/P).