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!