The GB4SM station was located at Highertown, St Martin`s in a holiday chalet belonging to a friend of my parents, Mrs Hensleigh. Fortuantly for us Mrs Hensleigh also has a field right next to the chalet and the field is on the highest part of the island. Standing on the wall of the field we had a 360deg view of the sea, quite amazing!.
The chalet consisted of a living/kitchen area and 2 bedrooms. One bedroom contained a double bed and the other had bunk beds. The main station was situated in the living area with the rig and amplifier on the dining table next to a large window with awesome views across the island and also the neighbouring islands.
The second station was not so exciting as the rig was sitting on a small table in the bedroom with the double bed and the only view from the window was a bush so you can imagine which station we liked operating best!.
The antenna`s..
We had several aerials with us to try and the first was a Cushcraft R5 vertical. This was mounted on an 18ft mast in the North-East corner of the field. The mast consisted of 3 sections of 6ft 2" masting supported by 3 guy ropes. From the R5 50M of UR67 coax ran around the field and in through the window of the second station. The second antenna was a Create `V` dipole mounted on exactly the same type of mast as the R5 but in the South East corner of the field with some 60ft separation. The V also had 50M of UR67 and this ran around the opposite side of the field as the R5`s coax to try and minimise interaction between the antenna`s.
Our inititial tests showed what we had expected that the V dipole was excellent for Eu and the R5 better for DX stations. We concluded that the best idea was to run as we had planned and use the FL2100 amp on the V dipole to improve signals for DX stations on 10,15,20 & 40. We would then run barefoot on the WARC bands and when one of us wanted to sleep we would then use the R5 on the main station.
All was well with both antenna`s showing very low SWRs until we tried firing both stations up together. They just trashed eachother with a wideband hash. We had a word with Mrs Hensleigh and she kindly let us move the V dipole into her own back garden giving us 200ft seperation between the antennas. The extra 140ft made all the difference and even allowed us to operate on 20M CW and SSB at the same time. We used the CW station for working Europe running 50W into the V dipole with the IPO (preamp) switched out so as to reduce the sensitivity and the main station was running 400W into the R5 to work `outside Europe only`. Once for a laugh we even ran 2 SSB stations. One on 14130 for Eu only and the also on 14260 for DX only with the operator announcing `Eu please QSY to 14130 and work our low power station`. This went down very well with the natives as it gave everyone a chance and no one got upset.
On Sunday morning the V dipole was replace with an 80-10M windom. This looked very promising as initial A/B tests with the R5 showed similar signals. After concluding that there was nothing in it we left the windom on the main QRO station for the rest of the trip while the R5 stayed on the second station.