The station setup

The station setup was a FT726R running 10 Watts into a Diamond CP22 5/8 over 5/8 mono bander at 30ft AGL. I left the SWR Bridge in-line so I could see the meter, there was just on 8 Watts showing on the power meter, and with approx 60ft of RG213 with a female SO239 back-to-back joing the coax together I am sure there wasnt 8 Watts to the feedpoint, so the 20Mw test I tried with a few stations I am sure would have been much less power than this, by how much? I have not tried to work it out so wont even guess here.

Cracking Spot

The QTH is in a layby just off the main road to Beacon Country Park, between the Ashurst beacon and Billinge Hill. Dalton is 165 Meters ASL, the layby is roomy and luckly theres a H bar or RSJ type of metal thing stuck in the ground perfect for supporting a mast. On close inspection it appears to be part of an old railway track!

I worked a few local stations at first, then a few other distant stations started to call in, I wasn't expecting to be very busy, and I really can never tell what sort of reports you would get, but today I was very happy with the reports I got.

Normally the FDK would be in use, and I have found that the FDK plus the 5/8 over 5/8 is just asking for breakthrough at Dalton, though with using the FT726R that wasn't a problem at all, and 59's were getting down to Porthmadog and Amlwch (Anglesey), I was a 41 into Northern Ireland and managed a report from Yorkshire too, I was made up with the time spent up there, and the weather was great.

A few stations with good signals were asked to see if they could hear me when I turned down my power to 20Mw, a few could with glowing signal reports, others could not hear me.

I would like to thank all the stations I worked as I really had a great time working you all, and you all made my trip to Dalton worth while and memorable. To the stations that didn't quite make it thank you for trying, maybe next time I will hear you?

Heres some images and a few little video's, maybe they are boring, but at least you get to see the location.

Dalton

Below Anglesey and some of North Wales (Anglesey on the right)

Below, Same view as above except zoomed out

Below, the setup on the 6th Sept with small mast.

Below, The FT726R

The files below are AVI files and are quite large in size, so they may take a minute or two on a broad band connection, for dial-up 56K connections possibly would take over 30mins to download!

Click HERE for a video showing the supporting pole for the CP22 mono-bander

Update - 7th September

I went back to Dalton the next morning 7th Sept, and tried this... On the larger mast.

With some amazing stations worked, it was a fantastic day for me (and them I hope) the weather was very good, and again I had no break through problems with the Mono-bander up at 30FT ish using RG213

My first most interesting contact of the day was from G4YLV Bob in Leeds heres a recording as promised Bob! click HERE

However, THE most spectacular contact of the day was MW3RVN and his Dad MW0NCO who I worked at 11:10GMT, I did hear a station trying to call in, and I asked them to keep trying, when I eventually got Steven's call his audio improved alot, and he told me that I worked his dad the day before, he then told me that he was using a handie, with the rubber duck antenna and was stood outside in the front looking over at Porthmadog Harbour! amazing... so I asked if I could record some audio, so David his dad worked me and in the recording I got his call sign wrong! sorry! so heres a sound file of MW0NCO taken from the video he's on a 5W handie stood at the front door in Porthmadog to Dalton listen HERE or watch the Video file HERE and see the setup too.

And heres a pic of Steve (left) and David a few minutes later at the door of their house too! Thanks guys!

And finally a 360 degree video capture from the top of the mast, theres not quite a 360 view to all areas, but nearly, download it HERE below are some screen shots of the video