As you would have noticed the IOTA contest was on over the last 24 Hrs. For the first time ever I decide to have a go away from home, and see what I could work in 12 Hrs.
The setup was the Racal push up mast 12m,
Icom 7000, Linear Amp UK 1200,
Honda 2K Generator,, 2E Quad.
Assisted by John M0UKD we set the mast and quad up early afternoon. The forecast was rain for the afternoon, so it was important to get operational by 4PM so we could ensure everything was packed away and dry in time for the rain.
Once setup we tested the quad and the Linear Amp and found that was reasonably happy driving the radio (around 25w) into the linear (around 300 to 350 out)
Again the mast was hand rotated, in the maim we only had 2 or 3 ways to beam.
The objective was to try and work some rare Islands, or indeed some nice DX. It was much more around quality than quantity.
Operating from the car, it was quite interesting when the storm hit around 8pm, quite a bit of lightning but nothing too close (mostly over 2 km away) so we pushed on !
Hunting around we managed to work quite a few nice countries and islands, including New Zeland, Ecuador, Australia, Columbia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Honduras, Chile, St. Lucia, Guadeloupe, Dominican Republic, Saudi Arabia, Madagascar, Indonesia, Japan, China and Market Reef.
The highlight for me was China, although I have never managed to work so many VK and JA stations and working ZL was quite special on phone.
All together we worked 53 DXCC and 64 IOTA and 167 stations worked.