Here a short report of our one-week expedition to St. Mary's which is the main island of the Scilly Isles.
 
 

We stayed there from September 16^th to 23^rd, 2000. Our main activities were on 144Mhz but we were also QRV on shortwave (20m,15m,10m) and on VHF/UHF (6m,70cm,23cm,3cm).

In the evening of September 14^th we started from Dresden and went via Jena and Frankfurt, where we picked up the rest of the crew, to Cherbourg (Normandy). After 1400km of driving we caught the ferry to Pool on the evening of the15^th. In England we had to travel another night through because the ferry Scillonian III from Penzance to the Isles of Scilly left in the morning of September 16^th. We were lucky to have brought our own petrol with us because in the UK you had no chance to get any at those times. In France it had been no problem.

There is no car transport possible to the Scillies so we had to check in our luggage what was really a lot because of all the equipment. On the island it was taken to our cottage by lorry which was very comfortable. Well, after two days of traveling we had to put up our mast that same evening because we were having skeds during the night and we wanted to do some random. At 26 degrees and sunshine our tiredness nearly vanished and we managed to put up three masts with shortwave, 6m, 2m and 70cm and prepare the mast for 23cm and 3cm for Sunday's 3cm-contest.Finally we got QRV around 19UTC.

We started with meteorscatter skeds at 00UTC. After 03UTC we went to our random QRG and started CQing as we had announced but there was no reply. At about 0720UTC we decided to look for some tropo contacts. It didn't take long till we caught Dave G7RAU who spotted us for MS-random in the cluster and now we had activity! After 0930UTC there were more and more calls on our random qrg via tropo telling us to qsy for 3cm talkback for the contest which had just started, so no MS was possible any more. We did qsy but conditions on 10GHz were terrible, no clouds and so no rainscatter. We tried lots of times with different stations but we could only complete with two French stations in IN88 via tropo. In the evening we did MS skeds again and on Monday morning after 03UTC it was random with the second station but also this time there was no reply for a long time! After 06UTC we could at least complete one random contact this morning. The next morning it was the same. Later on tropo we had some contacts into ON, PA and DL1EJA at JO31-square.

All the time we tried very hard to get access to the Cluster system. It was possible but very instable till we found the best digi. Imagine we were in the extreme southwest of the UK and the next digi was some 170km away. Our 2m packet station consisted of a TR-751 with a 150W amplifier and a fixed 4 element vertical yagi. Without that, the digi could not have heard us. Doing packet or any other 2m activity was not possible because of qrming. In the end we found a digi running quite well with a connection to GB7PDX cluster. On Wednesday at 00UTC we had a 220V AC power failure till 06UTC. We are very sorry for those who had a sked at that time. We tried to forward the info to Germany by telephone and the clusternetwork. After that there was also very low activity on random. We managed, after some tries, to complete with I8MPO in JN70 in SSB over 1900km!! In the afternoon we caught very nice conditions and did more than 10 stations on random! This was because we were announced at the cluster this time; had it not been the case there wouldn't have been such an acivity. Because of low activity in the mornings we decided to do some random only after the skeds. So only one of us had to stay up the whole night. Altogether we could complete 59 contacts via meteorscatter.

Besides, we made some nice contacts also on 70cm up to 790km and on 23cm upto 630km. The activity was very low on that bands. On 6m there was nothing but noise at the beginning. We were very surprised what you can work via tropo on 6m!!! Only during the last day we had a short opening to Africa. On the other hand we made contacts on 20m,15m and 10m with a very lowly mounted antenna. We used a groundplane (Fritzel GPA 30) only 2m above the ground but we always got nice reports! So some were pleased to get EU-011 (IOTA) and SV-91 (Worked All Britain Award) into their log.

The way back on September 23^rd was as exhausting as our first trip but we managed everything nicely with only smaller problems.

The QSLing for M0CQZ is handled by Fred DH5FS. It's OK via bureau or directly. Everyone is handling the cards for the QSOs he did with his personal callsign. It will take some weeks till the photocards will be printed. Be patient, everyone will get a card!
 
 
 
 

the team:
 
 
 

DG0OPK	Michael	23cm-OP
DH0LS	Jens	3cm-OP
DH1DM	Steffen	pictures	http://www.qsl.net/dh1dm
DH5FS	Fred	organisator, license owner	http://www.qsl.net/dh5fs
DK1CM	Oli	web-story, pictures	http://www.qsl.net/dk1cm

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Here you can have a look into our logs:
 

	6m log	graphic of worked squares on 6m
	2m tropo log	graphic of worked squares on 2m via tropo
	2m ms log	graphic of worked squares on 2m via meteorscatter	now complete with all tries
	70cm log	graphic of worked squares on 70cm
	23cm log
	3cm log

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Our stations consisted of:
 
 
 

shortwave:	IC-756 or FT-100 with 100W and GPA-30 groundplate at 2m agl
6m:	IC-756 or FT-100 with 100W and 4 element yagi at 6m agl
2m:	IC-756 + LT2S + 3CX800A7 with 400W + DTR (up to 3000lpm - NF-keying) and 2 x 9 element F9FT yagi at 11m and 8,5m (skeds)  TR-751 + 4*MRF with 300W + BF981 + DTR (up to 3000lpm - NF keying) and 9 element F9FT yagi at 8m (random)  TR-751 + 150W amplifier + preamp and 4ele (packet)
70cm:	FT-100 + 100W amplifier + preamp and 21 element F9FT yagi at 9m agl
23cm:	TR-751 + Transvervter with 35W and Mgf1302 preamp and 35 element F9FT yagi at 5m agl
3cm:	TR-751 + Transverter with 2W and 70cm dish at 3m agl

 
 
 
 

QSL address for M0CQZ:

Any suggestions???  [email protected]