Sked requests

We are taking some sked requests now, if you would like to chat with us, make a IOTA contact with Skye or just drop in to see how we are doing, you can email us at sked (at) mx0wcb.com and simply let us know what band, your call sign and date / time and we will happily try our best to hook up on air.





And if your technically minded you can also follow us on twitter @mx0wcb or follow us on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/WessexContestGroup or just drop into our website for any updates www.mx0wcb.com

We all look forward to talking to as many people as we can, and hope we don’t get eaten alive by the midges.

Antenna lists (so far)



Our TB3 aloft on the Scam 12

I think we are agreed in what we want to take to Skye, but as always its subject to change. This is so far what we have decided.

·         The HF Yagi

·         W3DZZ (2 types of traps going)

·         A 160m Dipole (trapped)

·         6m Yagi

·         2m Yagi

·         Some random wire & Fishing pole combinations

·         All the masts you could possibly lay your hands on.

Of course nothing is set in stone, but we actually have enough masts and hoisting methods to put up and pull down all the combinations of antennas we can think of. So until its actually time, we don’t really know.

Travel plans for Skye

Not dissimilar to a Top gear race, here is how we plan to get ourselves and the kit to Skye. Dave and I will drive up from Wiltshire to Loch Lomond on Friday 11^th May.  We will be carrying the kit all piled up on the trailer and in the car. The plan is for a late check in and late check out on the following Saturday. We will then take a gentle drive over on Saturday to Skye arriving hopefully mid-afternoon. On the other hand Steve and Simon set off for Bristol airport Saturday morning, arrive in Inverness on Saturday afternoon, and drive over to Skye. Its very possible that Steve and Simon will beat us there. But they have been tasked with getting the shopping !!

Easter Test

Easter provided a rare opportunity for us all to meet up. In fact we rarely see each other in the same place, so Easter we made an effort to meet up and to try out some of our purchases. It was great to also pass on the knowledge that Dave and I had acquired while playing with the masts. Quite quickly and despite some silly mistakes made by me we did have our wire antennas hoisted and strung up between 3 masts. Over a cup of tea, and Simons espresso  (time to show off the generator for boiling the kettle) we managed to get a couple of QSO’s into Nottingham on 80m using just the FT817 (about 3 watts) and the W3DZZ. It all showed promising results !

After a rest we set work to getting the Yagi built, and aloft. All went well until it was time to SWR the antenna, and it really didn’t work too well. 20m was high, 15m was spot on but 10m just wouldn’t play ball. After some fiddling we all decided the best thing to was to strip, clean and re assemble the antenna. – that was a task for another day !

In its broken state and again with a FT817 (using LDG ATU) we did “almost” manage to get into South Africa on 10m, all but 1 character was confirmed from our MX0WCB call sign. Close but no cigar.

After YagiGate, it was time to play with the secret weapon of this year’s trip. Steve has been busy building some Band pass filters that will allow us to operate 2 HF stations in fairly close proximity to each other with no bleed through.  Steve had built a 20m Band passfilter for us to play with.  Steve and Dave where listening  on 20m with the filter in line, Simon and I started calling CQ firstly with the key on 40m. The antennas at this stage are only 40m apart from each other and the Yagi pointing straight at the dipole that is 40ft off the floor. No interaction was heard apart from the direct harmonic (not a great deal can be done about that !)

Calling CQ via SSB was again astounding. We tried allsorts to bleed through but nothing was heard. Without the Band Pass Filter in line, splatter was detected right across the 20m band. So an excellent trial.

The day did end with us all getting a bit wet, not from the rain but the drizzle that then made the long grass super wet !

New trapped antenna

The traps made and ready to go

We need an antenna for 80 and 40m for our Skye trip so I was asked to see what I had or could come up with.

I have a doublet and balanced ATU but a good friend who is well experienced in DX operation suggested going for resonant dipoles. Whilst we will not be short of space we will have a limited number of masts and feeders, so a multi-band option seemed sensible.

When I was first licensed in the 1980s the W3DZZ dipole was really popular but it has almost vanished from view, although it is covered in most decent antenna handbooks. It is effectively a trap dipole for 80 and 40 so is resonant on 80, 40 and 15 and can be used on 20 and 10m. Many current designs use coax cable traps which are (allegedly) easy to build.

There was an article in PW a while ago and there are numerous websites to help so I am currently cutting and winding traps and will report back when I have tested them.

73, Steve, G0FUW

Lost of new toys !

On our last trip I distinctly remember when Dave, Simon and myself were sat at Exeter services eating a pasty with a cup of tea. We all agreed what an excellent trip we had, but  we really should try to improve our antennas. After all Scilly was basically using 1 antenna in the shack.  The Snowdon (or G7) antenna was just 7m tall and was mounted just above ground height. Don’t get me wrong it did a fantastic job, and if we go back to Scilly – I would suggest we take that again.

So for Skye we have really pushed the boat out.  We have purchased a number of big items, but the kit list so far contains 2 SCAM 12 masts, 2 33ft Aluminium masts, a G600 rotator, a triband HF antenna, 8KV generator, Compressor , LinAmp Challenger 4 and about 200m of coax.

The actual kit list is an awful lot bigger, but in essence that is it. However 1 important piece of kit hasn’t been mentioned thus far. If anyone has ever used, or come into contact with the SCAM 12 masts they will know that a) they’re not light and b) its not the sort of thing you can easily put in the car. So Dave has purchased a car transporter specifically to transport all our kit to and from Skye. This gives us fantastic flexibility for transporting kit around, as we can stack all our antennas, masts, generators etc on the trailer and keep the radios nice and dry in the car.

Saturday - The journey (part way) home

Having weathered a storm on the way in nature repeated itself. This time though we managed to get a through soaking twice on the little ferry between the islands. A round of cooked breakfasts in St. Mary’s helped lift the spirits again before the Scillonian III took us back to the mainland rather more gently than it had before. While on this voyage we overheard the Captain explain that the Harbourmaster had thought him mad to set out straight into Katia the previous week. He was clearly right, but thoughts of those YouTube videos came back.

SO with a curry back on the mainland and some tea and a shower - we were all pretty knackered and we had hoped to visit Poldhu the next morning, arguably the birthplace of radio communications on the way back to Wiltshire, but with an 80% chance of another soaking before hours in the car back, we decided to head back home.