24 September - 1 October

The year 2005 DXPed saw us return to Green Farm.

However, this year our numbers were reduced to Tom/G0PSE, Bill/G3WNI and Bills’ wife, Tessa. Bill and Tom were going to be operating and Tessa had agreed to do the cooking (again) and walk their dog, Jessie.

Because of the man-power constraints, it was decided not to assemble and erect 30 feet of scaffolding to support the Carolina Windom antenna. The alternative was to use two 20 feet scaffold poles 75 feet apart and these would support the ends of a Doublet antenna.

Bill had done his research before leaving home and had made a Doublet antenna which consisted of two driven elements of 33 feet (totalling 66 feet) and 25 feet of 300 ohms balanced feeder.

The Doublet was configured into an inverted Vee by raising the centre point to 27 feet with the aid of a fibre glass telescopic pole. A plastic garden chair was placed at the bottom of the telescopic pole and this supported the SGC230 Smartuner which was connected to the 300 ohms feeder. Tom’s antenna contribution was to make a 6 metres half-wave dipole. This was fastened to a 6 feet long fibre glass pole which was clamped to one of the 20 feet scaffold poles.

This simple set-up would allow us to use all bands from 160 to 6 metres.

We ran two stations, the Doublet and 6m Dipole were used by Tom with his Icom IC756PRO2.

Bill used his Tentec Argonaut rig with a Buddipole antenna.

Having arrived on the Scillonian on Saturday, 24 September, we were keen to get on air as quickly as possible. The first QSO in the log was EA8ZS on 40 metres at 2056Z, then after working on 80 metres, closed down before midnight. It had been a long day of travelling from Taunton followed by the antenna erecting and everyone was very tired.

During the rest of the week, the Doublet antenna performed very well. Though CQ calls were put out on 10 metres and 6 metres, no stations were heard. Those bands were dead. A total of 66 DX Entities were worked on the other bands from 12 to 160 metres and more than 1200 QSOs went into the GB0SM log. All of the seven regions, (Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Oceania and Antarctica) were worked, with three new ones for GB0SM. - Antarctica, Tajikistan and the United Arab Emirates.

The Doublet antenna was taken down on the Friday afternoon, Bill packed his station away and we were reduced to the IC-756PRO2 with the Buddipole antenna. This was a basic station so that we could make some QSOs on the Saturday before the final packing up.

To summarise, it was a very enjoyable and successful DXPed./ holiday.

I set myself several targets at the outset.

To get 8 days operating in the log for a one week DXPed. To make 1,000 QSOs. To work 100 Countries. To improve on the GB0SM Country Total of 134 Countries worked so far.

So we got 8 days of QSOs in the log. We made over 1200 QSOs. We improved the Country Total from 134 to 137 … but we never worked 100 countries during the week. I’m happy with three out of four.

The GB0SM log which is available for on-line checking at www.qsl.net/gb0sm has been updated to include this year's activity.