2 - 9 October 2004.

The 2004 DXPed had the same members as last year - G0PSE/Tom, M0AOD/Dave, G3WNI/Bill
and his XYL, Tessa.
On Saturday 2nd October, Bill and Tessa flew on the scheduled helicopter flight from
Penzance to St. Mary's.
Earlier that day, at 4.00 a.m., Tom and Dave drove the 150 miles from Taunton to Penzance
with the trailer in tow.  Once the trailer was loaded onto the ferry, Scillonian 3, Tom
and Dave found a couple of bunks and were able to catch up on their lost sleep.
On arrival at St. Mary's, arrangements had been made to have the trailer delivered to
our QTH, and this was accomplished without problem.
Our QTH this year was self-catering accommodation for 5 people at Normandy Farm, half
a mile from Green Farm - which was not available for renting this year.  The owner of
Normandy Farm had made a couple of fields available to us, and the scaffold poles we
had pre-ordered had also been delivered.  We coupled together a 20 feet and a 10 feet
pole to make a 30 feet (approx. 9 metres) mast with a horizontal fibre-glass pole at
the top to act as a yard-arm.  With a 5:1 ratio block-and-tackle system, we soon had a
30 feet mast established.  The yard-arm had a pulley, and this was used to hoist the
Carolina Windom antenna to its operating height. The indoors part of the station was
then assembled and we were soon on the air.
Next morning, the antenna of our second station was erected.  This was an Inverted 'L'
tuned by a SGC-230 Smartuner and supported by two 9 metre high telescopic poles,
25 metres apart.  

Our DXPed was scheduled for Saturday to Saturday and I pride myself on getting QRV on
the day we arrive and having some QSOs before breakfast on the Saturday we depart.
A seven days DXPed with eight days activity in the log is my idea of a good return for
the money and effort spent. During the next 7 days, some good DX including VK, ZL, JA
and VR2 were worked.

Before the DXPed I had received an Email from VE7SMP/Bud requesting a QSO, as he and
other VE7s need EU-011 in their logbooks.  On consulting the RSGB propagation forecast
for October, the only windows for the West Coast were 1400Z - 1600Z on 17 metres and
15 metres.  On 4th October, I put out a CW CQ call on 18071 KHz at 1525Z and received
a reply from N6AW, whose QTH is south east of L.A. in California.  I asked him to put
GB0SM on the DX Cluster as looking for VE7s, but no more West Coast stations were heard.
Two days later, at 1720Z, during a CW pile-up on 14021 KHz, I heard VE7SMP and was very
pleased to work him and have a brief chat. Five minutes later, on the same frequency,
VE7DP was also worked.  So the forecasters got the time frame right, but were a bit out
on the frequency band.

This year's DXPed included a mini DXPed to St Agnes Island.  Being in the same Island
Group as St Mary's, it is also IOTA EU-011, though a different Square for WAB Square chasers.
This  operation involved a twenty minutes journey in an open inter-island ferry and we
soon set up a station consisting of a 12 volts 60 AH car battery, FT-100 transceiver,
SGC 230 Smartuner and a 10 metres fibre-glass telescopic pole.  The pole supported a
helical wound antenna wire and the counterpoise from the Smartuner was tied to a rock and
dropped into the sea.  This set-up  worked very well and we had some very good SSB and
CW QSOs around UK and as far east as Roumania.  Because of our proximity to the sea with
the antenna and the fact that the Atlantic Ocean was our counterpoise, we were getting
reports of 20 DBs over 9 from UK stations.  Though we had done this kind of operation
before, we were still amazed at the effectivenss of such a simple and basic set-up.
After activating Tolls Island last year, we were more selective this year in our 'Desert
Island' operation and we set up near the only pub on St Agnes, the Turks Head.  This pro-
vided us with adequate sustenance and we were able to enjoy our lunch-time break in comfort
and congenial surroundings.  Our Desert Island operation lasted about 5 hours on a lovely
sunny day, then we returned to the main operation back on St Mary's.

On the Friday we were warned that, because of forecasted strong eastery gales next day
in the English Channel, the Scillonian 3 would not be sailing on the Saturday. This brought
our departure forward by 24 hours and we made a smooth crossing back to Penzance on the
Friday afternoon's scheduled sailing.

During our stay we worked all continents (Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America
and Oceania) and were able to give some IOTA Chasers EU-011 as a new Island for their logbook.
The up-to-date log,  which includes this year's activity, is available for checking at
www.qsl.net/gb0sm.