SSB, 6W PEP, and VK

The 1970s Wombles.

 

Ooooooooo five thirty!  What does the 'O' stand for?  'Ooooh my God, it's early!'.  So went the fabulous banter in Good Morning, Vietnam.

And 05:30 (04:30UT) is when I got up this morning, and headed for the west coast of Anglesey to work the long path to the antipodes, using the FT-818 on its maximum PEP SSB output of 6W!

Sunrise at IO73rf.  The image nicely shows seawater-saturated sand directly underneath the antenna.  People who run models never, ever take this into account.

As is always the case, I was on site far too early.  FT8 was quite weak early on, and I do find working digital modes whilst portable even more unrewarding than when I use them at home.  When you are out in the cold, on your own, on a twilit beach, you want other people to hear how unusual your operating situation is - which they in turn usually find interesting!

Operating position this morning.

20m wasn't strong enough for SSB on the long path until just before 07:00UT.  I could then hear ZL3JAS in QSO with someone I think was in Tasmania on 14.190MHz.  The signal was quite stable (he was using an astonishing 1kW into a Cobwebb), and the audio good.  I rather enjoyed listening to an on-air rendition of the title music from the 1970s TV series The Wombles!  In modern parlance, 'Womble' has come to mean highway traffic officers, who are meant to make you think they're police, but aren't, and, consequently, have little respect from the driving public!

 

A modern day 'Womble'!

 

The guy in Tasmania heard me calling, but a Russian station came in over me, and so I was pushed out with my QRP signal!  A shame, as I would have liked to have a go at a ZL QSO.

I moved on to 14.245MHz, where Peter, VK3CFA, was also pushing out 1kW, but into a 4-element quad.  I gave him a call and he came straight back! We made a successful, if brief QSO, as propagation began to fade.  Peak long path only lasts a few minutes, and conditions this morning were pretty awful in general.  As much as I'd love to have caught my QSO on video, I was operating from a rock platform, so propping up the phone in a stable fashion whilst also using the radio is a bit, well, impossible!