Suffolk Red hosted a field weekend from their field day site at the Suffolk Aviation Heritage site near Ipswich. The weather was set fine, with temperatures close to 30C and with the option to camp out for the weekend.
George M1GEO, Chris G8OCV and I set up the operating tent and populated it with the following equipment.
HF – Icom 7610 and 1.3K Linear from expert
VHF – Icom 7100 and 300w VHF amplifier from Linear amp UK
RACAL push up mast
Power – Honda 2KW generator
The object was to try something new, so I opted for 9e LFA on the Racal push up mast and tried to work as many EU stations as I could on both phone and FT8. VHF seemed quite lively, and with good take off into Europe I was soon working into France, Germany, Denmark and Belgium.
LMR 400 coax was used to keep the losses down, and the masthead amp compensated for any RX losses.
Masthead amplifier for 144 MHz was originally published in the RSGB magazine RADCOM plus issue 1 designed by Ian White GM3SEK. The details are published on his website, detailed as the DG8 low cost, high-performance preamp for 144 MHz.
Over the course of the weekend I completed 50 QSO in 25 squares, the map is shown below. If you are new, or even not so new to FT8 you may find this operating guide helpful.
