Special Event Station F/ON6JUN/P 5 & 6 June 1999 commemorating the 55th anniversary of the landing in Ranville - Normandy

The Story

In august of 1998 Victor, ON6BV, came with the idea to activate a special event station in Ranville on the 6th of june '99, just as the radioclub did 5 years ago. It would be exactly 55 years ago that Europe was freed from the Germans. The members of the UBA section NNV were very pleased with this idea and so we demanded a special license to use the call F/ON6JUN/P. After a few letters, E-mails and phonecalls we got the license in april '99. We could use the call on the 5th and 6th of June. We had 2 months to organize that special activation, so there was a lot to do! Gaston, ON6FC, contacted all our members and Victor, ON6BV, became the expedition manager.

And there was Murphy! At 2 weeks from D-DAY Gaston came with the bad news that he couldn't go because of an urgent family reason. Also Antoine, ON6UH, had to say "no" because of his QRL activities! So we were with only 4: 3 operators and Mara, the XYL of Steven, ON1DLM.

There was a little bit of panic but by motivating each other, we continued our plan! At 1 week from THE weekend there came some light through the dark clouds:
Sven, Mara's brother and Eddy, ON4AFU, joined the crew. And we may not forget our "mascot": Marnix, the QRP of Steven and Mara. Everything was all right again! We had to make quickly some last arrangements and than came the big moment!

4th of June '99, 9:30 : the whole crew was present, loaded with the needed equipment. Ready for a trip of +- 8 hours, 450 Km with 4 cars and 1 trailer with a 6 KW power supply (+-300Kg) on it. Victor, a real "FRANCE-guide", showed us the way, with the greatest perfection, to Ranville, via the nicest sites of the Calvados and Normandy. The highlight was the crossing of the "PONT DE NORMANDIE", a big bridge over the river SEINE. We arrived in Ranville at 18:00.

The QTH! Via some telephone calls with the mare of Ranville, Victor had already reserved the location of 5 years ago. Because we wanted to activate also 144 MHz in excellent conditions, we searched a higher situated location.

Victor brought a little visit to "LE MAIRE DE RANVILLE". With success: 1 hour later we were on the highest point of the area with a free view in every direction. That evening we set up the camp. After that we had a little party. We made also some local QSO's via the repeater in CAEN and we tried packet radio. We discovered that the packetstation of LE HAVRE temporally had some problems so we could use only the BBS and we couldn't go to WW CONVERS or DX CLUSTER! I sended a mail to ON1DHT, Guy, but he received this message only on the 12 of June!!! That was a big handicap for ON1DHT's Internet site that we could use for this event. So we were very happy to have the GSM of Hugo, ON4AAA, to put some info on the site! After our little party we got some sleep, ready for the big weekend.

Saturday 5th of June '99: wake up at 7:00, a good breakfast and at work! The 3 antennas had to be mounted. And under a blue sky with a lot of sunshine that was a nice job. Only the heavy wind made it a little bit difficult. At 12:30 the transmit equipment was ready: a LEVY antenna in inverted V for 80/40 meters, a GROUNDPLANE for 20 meters and a 16 element YAGI for 2 meter.

In 3 tents we installed the 3 shacks. We did the 1st tests to see that everything was working fine and after that we had a nice diner made by Sven and Mara.

CQ CQ THIS IS SPECIAL EVENT STATION F/ON6JUN/P TO COMMEMORATE THE 55TH ANNIVERSERY OF THE LANDING IN RANVILLE-NORMANDIE CQ CQ. We where in the air!

We phoned Guy, ON1DHT, so he could announce it on the via Internet. Immediately we logged our 1st QSO's. During almost every QSO we gave some info about the station, working conditions, the reason of the activation, etc. We took our time for every contact. We were not a contest station. We got good reaction on that. Only the pile up QSO's were a little bit shorter. A lot of OM's sended their felicitations for this way of working! That pleased us a lot.

And then came the bad weather! Saturday afternoon it began to rain and there was a lot of wind. We had to stop often our transmissions to repair our camp.

This continued until sunday morning.

Sunday 6th of June '99: The sun came back again so we had a beautiful day with sometimes some rain. The heavy wind stayed. After breakfast and a little briefing we continued with the activation. A lot of stations tried to contact us so we had some beautiful pile ups on 80, 40, 20 en even 2 meter! When we came back to Belgium we heard that Hugo, ON4AAA, was heard live on the Internet during his QSO's on 40 meter. On 20 meters we reached the whole world via the radio waves an on 2 we had a beautiful opening direction UK that Sunday afternoon.

During our barbecue, sunday evening, we decided to close down the station at 21:00 so we could already start with demounting the station.

At about 21:00 we made our last QSO on 2 meter with "GW", Wales-UK. And then it was: THIS IS F/ON6JUN/P CLOSING DOWN...THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTED US.73.

After the demounting of the antennas and shacks, we had again a little party where we talked a lot of the weekend.

Monday 7th of June '99: At 7:00 the whole crew was awake and after a strong breakfast we loaded the equipment in the cars. At 11:30 everything was in the cars. ON5BY, Freddy, who visited us that weekend, invited us at his "coffee table" in his mobil-home. We made some photos of the whole crew and at 12:30 we started our trip back to Belgium. After a trip of 7:30 hours we were back home with the news that there was almost nothing more to eat because of the dioxin problem in the food. Maybe it was better to stay a few days longer in France, HI HI HI!

The UBA section NNV can look back to a great mini-expedition with the following results:

* Worked whole Europe with the 40/80 meter station, about 500 QSO's

* Worked all continents with the 20 meter station, about 500 QSO's

* Worked F, ON, PA, LX and G with the 2 meter station, about 100 QSO's,

Best QRB on 2 meter: 547 Km. Total QRB +- 25000 Km.

There are much more possibilities with such kind of special activation when we could have minimum 2 operators for each band, so that the station can be on the air during the whole activation and it don't stop during eating, sleeping, repairs, etc. That's our conclusion! And hopefully Murphy don't cross our way the next time, so we can go with 6 operators! But every OM from the crew said that we did a fine business with 4 operators for 3 stations.

A special word goes out to Sven and Mara for their logistic support. They did a great job to preparing and buying some food for the crew. Thanks a lot! And we may not forget Marnix, the QRP (almost 3 years young) of Mara and Steven, ON1DLM. He was our little mascot of the activation and often he brought the crew some funny and laughing moments.

Also thanks to "Le Maire the Ranville" and Mr Pilet, the farmer who was so kind to let us using his "luzime" field. Mer‡i, chers OM's.

UBA section NNV, Ninove East-Flanders, Belgium.

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