After activating Lundy Island (GB0LI) and St. Mary's in the Scillies (GB0SM), Bill/G3WNI and I thought we would try another UK island. For a change, we decided not restrict ourselves to a 'G' (England) QTH and opted for the Isle of Man.
We had found that the Lighthouse at Point of Ayre, in the far north of the island, had gone fully automatic and was no longer manned. The L/H keepers' cottages had been converted into holiday accommodation and we decided to rent one. Alex Gartmore/GD3UMW, the Sysop at GD7BIG, was then contacted and, after many Emails between us and the island, we became members of the IOM-ARS which gave us access to the Club's mobile tower and antenna. We asked M5RIC/Richard to see if he was interested as we knew that he is a keen IOTA and Lighthouse activator, and he immediately agreed to join the party.
On Saturday, 5th October, Bill, his wife Tessa and I drove from Taunton to catch the vehicle-ferry from Heysham to Douglas (M5RIC/Richard travelled by air from Gatwick) and eventually we arrived in Douglas at 6.00 pm. An hour later we reached Point of Ayre and I was delighted to see that Alex had delivered the antenna trailer, and the 4 element 5 band Moseley was mounted on its nested tower and all it needed was to be winched up to its operating height of 40 feet. The IOM-ARS had also arranged to have a halyard on a pulley fitted to the lighthouse railings and we raised our 110 feet Carolina Windom to a height of about 35 feet so that we could use it in an inverted vee configuration. The third antenna to be erected was an inverted 'L' supported by two 33 feet fibre-glass poles and tuned via a SGC-230 Smartuner.
We therefore had a steerable beam for 10, 12, 15, 17, 20 and 30 metres,
an inverted Vee Windom for 10 to 80 metres and an inverted L for 10 to 160 metres.
Indoors we set up three stations - one in each bedroom. Between us we were active in CW, SSB, RTTY and PSK31 and were able to connect to the DXCluster on 2 metres. The DXCluster was very useful for tracking propagation conditions and also for alerting the DX community of the frequencies we were working on. As soon as we 'spotted' ourselves on the Cluster, we were quickly involved in working a Pile Up.
Because of adverse solar activity, we did not enjoy good propagation conditions so working through the night was a waste of (sleeping) time and we each closed down at bed-time. Between the evening of the 5th. and the morning of our last day, the 11th. we had 1700 QSOs and worked 76 DXCC entities in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, South America and Oceania.
We received many grateful comments for activating the island, (IOTA EU-116), the lighthouse (International Lighthouse number IOM-013) and the Worked All Britain square (NX40).
On arriving back home, the GB2IOM log was sent in ADIF format to QSL.NET and it is now available on this web site for DXers to check that their QSOs are actually in the log.