Dxpedition to Tanera Mor on the Summer Isles, April 2001, GB5SI

Third time lucky so the saying goes. Third trip to the Summer Isles, would the propagation be any better this time ? It all started out well enough. Before setting off I received a lot of advice on propagation predictions and how to use the great software which is available. Armed with handfuls of colour charts and graphs I had a clear operating schedule all planned out ! It was going to be a good trip. I had planned the trip to celebrate my three years working on HF. After waiting over thirty years to get my ticket, and all the fun I have had in those three years a celebration was called for. So another trip to Paradise on the north west coast of Scotland was the obvious choice. After a five-hour drive from Edinburgh I pulled onto the jetty to see the 'Patricia' leaving Tanera Mor and heading to pick me up.

It was great to meet Bill again and the gear was quickly stowed and we were on our way. I was staying in 'Murdos Cottage' this time. What a great wee cottage this was. The three bedrooms and lounge were just great for a holiday but I had come to work the world so the kitchen became my shack. What a shack it was ! With all the essentials and many extras. The old range was a perfect source of heat, not too hot to fall asleep at 03.00z but warm enough to be comfortable. The background sound of the range and the coffee pot bubbling away become firm friends. Good electricity supply, a huge table for all the gear, comfortable seat and a view to die for of the sea and snow capped mountains of the Inver Polly Nature Reserve.

I used a Butternut HF6V ground mounted vertical with two radials per band and an old tribander at 5m AGL. I also had a low 80m dipole for working into the UK. Inside the shack the trusty FT1000MP and battered linear gave me a good 200w out on all bands. Thanks for all the nice comments regarding the fine quality of the signal; I think this was due to the Heil microphone and UNDER driving everything ! Logging was again on SuperDuper SDX by EI5DI. For RTTY I used the fantastic soundcard program MMTTY by JE3HHT www.geocities.com/mmhamsoft  If you have not tried RTTY download this program and I can promise you a lot of fun. For PSK I used WinPSK, all running on an IBM P166 ThinkPad.

Friday and Saturday went well with some nice DX popping up very occasionally and a nice steady stream of calls in the log. Then Mr Murphy struck with solar conditions going haywire. It was NOT to be third time lucky ! The HF bands then closed down on me and for about thirty hours there was very little heard. The HF6V tunes up great on 6m so I was able to work some stations via the huge aurora! A few hours before I left on the Monday conditions picked up and I added a few hundred stations to the log, ending up with 2300 QSOs.

The WX was fantastic and I wandered about the Island and surveyed the site for this years IOTA entry. The site is on the top of a sea cliff with a clear take off over the sea from north to south. Just behind the Old Schoolhouse,

which will be the shack, is a large mound for the vertical which should clear the obstructions for good propagation into North and South America. The IOTA contest will be the first few days of my holidays so there will be lots of time the following week to exploit the good DX openings which have failed to come along during the last three trips. So to all my friends outside Europe who have not worked EU92 don't worry we can do it in July !! QSL is 100% sure via RSGB or Direct.

SSB Contacts

Band     80     40     20     17     15     10     6

QSOs   12     109    1595  12     317    1      6 Total  2051

DXCC            5     29     65      8      46     1       4 Total 75

The weekend for me was a great success despite Mr Murphy and the aurora. All the gear performed well with a slight amplifier problem with the contacts to the output coil melting. A quick shut down and resolder ( after discharging the caps !! ) and all was well. The same problem happened last year so I need to investigate further.

I will be back again for my holidays in the summer and also on a regular basis because I feel the Summer Isles are a place where you can happily revisit time and time again and still take so much away. Thanks to Cary and Sean, who will be sharing the stay with me in July, Bill Wilder for permission,  www.summer-isles.com  the volunteers who publish and pass on DX information, the GMDX Group and to everyone who worked me, without whom there would be no EU92 Dxpedition.

See you from 27^th July 2001 for IOTA