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Camb-Hams DX Blog

We had an excellent day on the HF bands yesterday with huge pile-ups on 20, 40 and 80 and lots of great DX. We built the Spider Beam and put it up on the pump-up mast and also added a 160m dipole. So we now have antennas up for 160, 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10m on HF and 6m, 4m on VHF as well as the 2m and 70cm satellite system.

Personally, I spent a few hours on 40m in the afternoon, and worked through a great pile-up but the band wasn’t as good as the previous day. Lots of fading with stations disappearing into the noise very quickly. The band improved later in the afternoon with Rob M0VFC working the never-ending pile-up.

Colin G8TMV and Pete 2E0SQL worked 80m during the afternoon and evening, and I worked the late shift from around 21:30 until 02:00 UTC this morning. A really excellent session and I worked a great number of US, Canadian and South American stations in the early hours. Gavin M1BXF was working 40m while I was on 80m and we were able to pass the frequencies to the calling stations so that they could work us on both bands. I really enjoyed the runs of stations mixed with a bit of a chat with stronger stations, spending time to describe the operation here on Arran, and then trying hard to dig out the longer DX. A really great evening.

Martin G3ZAY started operating 80m again at 03:00 UTC and carried on working the DX.

Things are back in full operations again now, with 80 40, 20, 15, 6 and 4m all operational here on EU-123.

The G3PYE/P shack in full operation this morning

Gavin M1BXF on 6m and 4m

Pete 2E0SQL on 40m

Pete 2E0SQL on 40m and Lawrence M0LCM on 20m

Terry M0VFC on 15m

Bob G1SAA setting up one of the shack video cameras through the window