Dinner in the Cruin, starters being finished, mains next…

Current stopped in Dumbarton getting the last of the shopping to keep us going till Tuesday.

So not only do we have a Discovery 64 amplifier kindly loaned to us for the duration of the DX’Pedition by Linear Amp Ltd but we also have a 300 watt capable 4 meter amp based on an MRF-151G part, meaning that working 6m / 4m crossband just got a whole lot easier!  She may not be pretty but for 2 watts in we get 300 watts out 🙂

After posting pictures of the spiderbeam in the diary Dave M0VMC commented ‘All you have to do now is make it rotate fast enough and you can miss all the jams on the way to Harris…just watch out for EZY1344 to Nice out of East Midlands… 🙂’.  Well John G8XLB has made this into an image for us all to see! 

Another advantage of spinning the antenna fast enough to fly is we could create a doppler DF system!

Last night we got together for dinner, a final chat and the headed off to G4HUN’s QTH to get all the bits ready for the van and to Geoff G0DDX’s QTH to get the trailer mast ready.

Everything is now sorted for packing on Thursday for an am start on Friday 30th.

On Saturday 24th we got together to test the spiderbeam on the CRG van fondly known as Flossie!

Here is a video of the mast being pumped upto about 2/3 height…