Lighthouse weekend 2009.

The weekend started well with members arriving at the Lifeboat Station on the Friday ready to put up the antennas. These were going to be a full size Carolina Windom (CW) and a TH3 on top of the Trailer/mast. As always we had the use of the back room for all the equipment and this was duly put together with out much trouble. Equipment used was a Kenwood TS2000, Ranger 811H linear, MFJ ATU and HRD software for all the logging.

As always things don't always go as you hope and problems with the portable fishing rod, that was to hold up the center of the CW, broke under the strain. So, we decided to use the Mast as the support for the CW wich would keep the isolator off the ground by about 4 feet. Having completed the task of erecting the anntenas we checked that all was okay with the equipment and left, knowing that when we came back on Saturday we only had to raise the mast and the CW and we were up and running.

Conditions on the bands on Saturday were not very good at all, other than the weather which was very warm, and as usual there were competions going on, so trying to find a clear space was difficult to start with. Once we got going the QSO's were a little difficult to find but the opperators and loggers had a relaxing day. We finished the day with 154 mixed QSO's at about 19.30 hours.

Conditions on the bands on Sunday were a lot better and the QSO's started and finished with just one CQ call from us and that - apart from moving a couple of Khz up because of QRM, kept us going till about 15.30 hours when we had to pack up and leave. The day finished with another another 157 mixed QSO's giving a grand total of 311 QSO's for the weekend.

Our thanks to all those who we had contact with and we are sorry to those who could not get through to us for one reason or another.

Check the log book for the weekends contacts.