Last evening, having some time to wait around for family, I went to South Stack on Holy Island, which is part of the EU-124 coastal island groups under IOTA.
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| Holy Island, part of the wider EU-124 group. |
Unfortunately, the IOTA system shows weaknesses with EU-124, in that Holy Island is connected by fixed road and rail infrastructure that renders it, to all practical effects, part of the larger island of Anglesey (which is considered part of the UK mainland, itself a bone of considerable and long-standing contention). Compare that with another EU-124 member, the offshore reef we call 'The Smalls', and that is found to be over 28km out to sea!
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| The Smalls reef. Getting here is almost impossible for most. |
Anyway, I decided to run WSPR around the sunset period. The antenna was not as well matched on this very ancient rocky sea cliff as it is down on the seawater-soaked sand, coming in at around 1.5:1. I sent 1W at 14MHz out of the TS480 in the boot, and then went for a walk.
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| Sea cliffs at South Stack. |
Twenty-two minutes later, I was really quite pleasantly surprised at how well the stick antenna did. To all intents and purposes, it looked on the map as though I was operating the delta loop back at home. I even manged to get to DP0GVN twice, with a best signal of a very respectable -16dB SNR. It might be considered nothing special, until you consider the absolutely terrible band conditions at present!
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| Reception reports for 1W, stick antenna on the car, 18:12-18:34UT 2018 Sept 27 |
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