And we’re on the way home. 10,299 QSOs in the log after a final session on 40m last night.

After breakfast on the ferry, the now-traditional awarding of a stuffed sheep this year went to Linda, G0TPX, for her fantastic patience in making over 500 QSOs this year. The animal in question got an upgrade this year, and has been named Baaabara. “Little Flossie”, the previous mascot, will go to Steve M1ACB for making the most QSOs.

Despite some pretty nasty weather at times, the only antenna casualty was one section of fibreglass pole. The repaired KPA500 continued working well to the end, and all other radio gear performed well throughout.

Congratulations to F5IAE for the most QSOs in the log at 14 (over 7 bands), followed shortly by M3JFM, OK2PAY and SP9FKQ at 9 QSOs each.

Now we just need to decide where to go next year…

It’s nearly the end of the week for us, and almost everything is now packed away – just leaving a single station on 40m for this evening.

We hit the magic 10,000 QSO mark earlier this afternoon after a bit of a race between myself (M0VFC) and Martin G3ZAY on 20m and 17m CW, matching each other almost QSO-for-QSO. We eventually called a truce at 1,850 QSOs each. However, Steve M1ACB holds first place with 2,235 QSOs – clearly keen to keep his hands on the fluffy sheep that rewards the operator making the most contacts in the week!

Thanks to everyone who called us over the week. We’ve had a fantastic time, and hopefully you’ve enjoyed working us as well, whether on one band or many.

Congratulations to F5IAE for working us on seven bands: 6m, 15m, 17m, 20m, 30m, 40m and 80m. Managing six bands were: PE1RLF, SP9FKQ, VO1SA and OK2PAY.

Tomorrow morning we start the journey back to JO02 square, where we can all start rebuilding our respective shacks, having emptied them for this week!

A little excitement earlier today when the indoor shack (i.e. the thing we’ve turned the dining room into!) started smelling of expired components. After investigation, it turned out to be from G1SAA’s Elecraft KPA500 amplifier, and after disassembly we spotted the source – a surface-mount capacitor on the input to the low pass filter board.

Thankfully after a quick email to Elecraft support, we found the value of the capacitor, and a quick email to Roger GM4PMK who lives on the island, we had a replacement part which Gavin M1BXF fitted – and the amp lives again!

Thanks very much to Roger for the part and Craig at Elecraft for his swift reply and help.

(This post bought to you while waiting for S9 static rain to clear through…)

We’ve now been on air for about three days, and the QSO count stands at a satisfying 5,500. Everything up to 2015-05-18 1629 UTC has been uploaded to Club Log and LoTW, and we’ll continue with regular uploads throughout the week.

We now have the full compliment of HF bands available to us thanks to a 12m vertical dipole, and the satellite antennas are up, so we have the first QSOs in the log from some of those passes.

The highest HF bands (10 and 12m) have been relatively quiet so far here, so we’ve been concentrating on CW on them until propagation supports SSB. If you’re looking for us on those bands, it’s worth checking the Reverse Beacon Network for CW.

We’ve had some positive comments about our signals, and here having vertical antennas right next to the sea certainly helps -as you can see from the photo, the radials from the 40m 1/4 wave vertical (closest to the camera) are actually under water at high tide. Moving back, there’s 17m and 20m, with 12m in the distance.

Another quick update – weather continues to be changeable, proving the Scottish motto of “if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes and it’ll change”! At times the rain static on the VHF antennas causes a lot of noise, and similarly on HF

We’ve put up some more antennas, including 10m and 15m rotary dipoles and an inverted-V for 80m, so we’re now operational on all our planned bands except 12m, where we plan a vertical dipole.

The QSO total currently stands at around 2,700, and all QSOs up to 1327 UTC today (Sunday) are now uploaded to both Club Log and LoTW. We’ll continue uploading periodically as internet access allows.

We’ve now been on Mull for nearly 24 hours, and the stations are starting to come together, with over 700 QSOs in the log so far, including 67 on VHF thanks to some Es last night.

Poor weather means antenna work is happening between heavy rain showers, and high winds mean that when we say we’re using a vertical, it’s more like an S-shape at times! We’ve currently got:

• 17-ele on 2m
• 7-ele on 4m
• 6-ele on 6m
• Vertical dipole on 17m
• Vertical dipole on 20m
• Vertical with elevated radial on 30m
• Vertical on 40m

That still leaves quite a few to build – the Spiderbeam for 10/15/20m, the satellite antennas, and 80m vertical.

On 2m, we’ve decided to remove the elevation system as it added a lot of weight at the top of the mast, and instead mount the 17-ele Tonna for azimuth rotation only. Hopefully this will still allow some EME operation at moonrise and moonset, as well as tropo QSOs.

Casualties so far: one 10m fibreglass pole, and lots of dry clothing!