GB0KAA Special Event Station

I heard from a friend of my wife's that the local hospital's Asthma centre (Kettering General) was a bit stretched for funds so I thought what can we do to help. As all three of my children suffer with Asthma especially the youngest this was something close to my heart. My children have never had to use the centre, but there may be the first time. Any way I come up with the idea of me operating a sponsored 24 hour Amateur Radio station. Then I thought why do it alone? So I had a chat with my very good friend Jono (G7TZZ) and I persuaded him to also join in and operate on VHF, UHF and Satellite whilst I was operating on the HF bands.

TONY operating GB0KAA

For a few months up to the event we both did a lot of work over the club site in Harrington (situated at an Aviation Museum) and made sure the station would be ready and fully functional for the whole 24 hours. A lot of work and modification, but we did it. We spent the day before the event setting up the antennas and putting up the mast we use at the club site and did the final checks, leaving the site at about 9pm.

We arrive at the site on the day of the event (15th July 2000) at 10am and plug in our radios and set up the computers we will use for satellite tracking, DX cluster and packet radio. We are ready for the 12 midday kick off and just as we are about to start the local paper (Evening Telegraph) arrive and get some pictures of us in action.  The station on HF was a Kenwood 570-SG, Heil Headset with Pro-5 insert and using about a hundred watts into a Tri-Band Crushcraft beam and a Windom multi-band dipole. UHF, VHF and Satellite was a Yaesu FT-736 and various 2mtr and 70cms beams both horizontal and vertical polarity.

Aerials

Things were going very well indeed me working HF and Jono working UHF, VHF and Satellite with the call GB1KAA, well I was doing really well that was until late in the evening when the earth was hit by the solar flare that had happened the night before and caused a major Aurora and totally killed the HF bands, I really struggled over night to keep the contacts going, but I worked my first Aurora stations on 6mts. My friend Jono was having a whale of a time on 2mts and 70cms with the Aurora and was working stations non stop getting 59a over most of Europe. I thought it was him who was going to struggle over the night and me who was going to be very busy! How wrong I was!

JONO operating GB0KAA

By the morning (about 8am local time) the HF bands had picked right up again and I was working major pileup's on 20mts and I was having to take lists of about 15 to 20 calls at a time, but it was great fun. The last 4 hours of the event was non stop for me and even though I had been going for 24 hours non-stop and my voice was failing fast I didn't want to stop! I was just enjoying it too much, but I had to and I finished with my last contact at about 12:15pm local time. Due to my conditions with HF 99% of the stations I worked were in Europe, and Jono had worked more counties than me via the satellites. I couldn't believe it, but that's radio!

TONY and JONO operating GB0KAA

We had done it! Gone for 24 hours solid worked over 400 stations and raised a lot of money for the local hospital and would we do it again? Well I am now planning the next one for next year and another worthy cause, stay tuned!

Tony M0AQP.