Sunday, September 11, 2011

9/11 Tenth Anniversary

Today  the global radioamateur community honor all those lost on September 11, 2001, with special remembrance of the amateurs who lost their lives in this tragedy;

Steven Jacobson N2SJ
William Steckman WA2ACW
Gerard "Rod" Coppola KA2KET
Bob Cirri KA2OTD
Michael Jacobs AA1GO
Winston Grant KA2DRF
Winston A. Grant, KA2DRF

Monday, September 5, 2011

Holiday activities

While enjoying a very active holiday in Drenthe, one of the northeast provinces, I managed to spend some time to set up a configuration and take some part at the Lighthouse weekend (August 20/21). Offcourse I had my D-Star handheld and DVAP taken with me, which gave me a lot of fun in the evening hours. Especially for the lighthouse event I brought my Yaesu FT-897 with me and several homemade wire-antenna's. Unfortunatly there was a high density of trees surrounding my cabin so I didn't had the oppertunity to make use of the ZS6BKW i build some time ago. Also I didn't wanted to highjack to childrens playground in front of the cabin to set up my Buddipole.

Luckily enough I managed to place a G5RVjr, one leg on 6  meters, the other on 3. SWR was okay on all bands. Although the vast density of the woods surrounding me, I heared a lot of traffic. Altough the location conditions were not good, I managed to work some european stations that Saturday. One of them was my 'first' with the Isle of Man. That afternoon on 20 meters I worked GT8IOM, the Island Radio Club at Ramsey. They're flag is now decorating my logbook (and the flagcounter on my QRZ page) and although the short distance, I am very proud to have worked them! You'll understand I had a very enjoyable afternoon, it was certainly worth the extra 20 kilo's of bagage I had to bring along!