Exercise Blue Ham June
The club continued the tradition of taking part in Exercise Blue Ham, our score for this weekend is 10. That is fewer contacts than we made in March, however we decamped on the Sunday morning to visit Westrally in Frome, so we only returned to operating from about 1pm local time. We noticed the longer days - the band gradually dies from noon and picks up again towards the evening. However, since Blue Ham ends at 5 we aren’t getting the evening lift that we got in March because of the longer day length.
From the Alpha Charlie Blue Ham 2019 score table (NB this is only live for a short while after the event and is overwritten by future events).
Contacts for MX0IOA = 10 MRE41(5.379),MRE22(5.304),MRE11(5.32),MRE41(5.4035),MRE34(5.304), MRE41(5.335),MRE34(5.335),MRE60(5.3985),MRE22(5.335),MRE61(5.398),
The weather was kind to us both days, although we had been promised some serious rain we didn’t really get wet raising the antenna or striking it. We visited Westrally on Sunday morning and the rain was good to us there too, the morning was largely dry, the downpour was saved for the road on our return journey.
We used the homebrew balun tested here on this exercise. You can tell Mike M6FCT was a Scoutmaster, the knotwork on the rope holding the balun box to the mast is solid. It was a sod to derig at the end of the weekend though, those knots are good!
There’s a case to be made that Exercise Blue Ham is a contest, but it is not as frenetic as a typical amateur radio contest. Mike M6FCT managed to complete and get going his Spaxton MW radio kit as part of the Intermediate practicals, and Gary has hopefully got a fair number of ideas about low-cost aerials he can construct.
Propagation plot
This uses the Raspberry Pi rig with VMOS amplifier to run WSPR described here. The 60m band doesn’t have the same number of stations monitoring it as, say, the nearby 80m band but the pattern of propagation falling off in the afternoon that we experienced is shown on this trace, source also located in IO81pd
Our March certificate - despite losing 1/4 of the operating time we qualified for a certificate this time too with 10 contacts with cadet stations on different frequencies and days.
Westrally
We visited Westrally on Sunday morning, club members came away with a decent haul - a VHF rig, a MFJ Versatuner, up to 3GHz 60W attenuator and dummy load, along with some patch cables, and Gary got a good SWR meter.
The council car park charged this year, unlike in the past, when it was free on Sundays. That is contrary to what you would expect from reading this news report. Perhaps Frome council didn’t charge for the traders’ part of the car park, but attendees needed to pay.