Dear all.
Myself and John G4GVC have just finished a portable session operating as
G2BBC/P (my club callsign). QTH was Market Bosworth in West Leicestershire.
We have to apologise for the massive QSB that everyone we worked commented
on.
The reason was the wind, or lack of it! Sometimes the kite would soar up to
near-vertical (the 599 bits) then the wind would drop and it would slowly
fall back allowing the wire to dangle on the ground and completely de-tune
the system. To prevent the wire touching the ground too much I spent much of
the time running around with a piece of dowell to hold the drooping wire off
the grass... Occasionally the kite would dive off to one side and the wire
would get tangled around some small trees, I then had to shout to John to
stop sending whilst I disentangled it and run back with my little stick
supporting the wire whilst the kite took it back up! LX1PD managed to time
his CQ calls exactly wrong so that the kite was flying well during his calls
and fell out of the sky when he was listening... better luck next time.
The static got too bad to hear much and the picnic-ers became to numerous to
continue by 13:45 so when the kite came down for the umpteenth time we gave
up.
We worked four countries, nine stations in all.
We'll be back!
Dave G3YXM.
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