Today I got back from a week in north Devon where my wife and I had a holiday cottage. The weather was pretty good for the time of the year allowing us to get up onto the hugher parts of Exmoor on several occasions. With my trusty VX2 handportable I managed to work plenty of stations through various repeaters in South Wales but my best DX was a simplex QSO on 145.525MHz with
G4TRA in Gloucestershire at 101km. Despite just using the VX2 and a quarter wave whip he gave me a report of 59+20dB when I held the rig horizontal. To quote Steve, "you sound like you are in the next garden". Following this contact I worked MW0ZAP simplex. Time (and batteries) prevented me trying for more QSOs but I'd forgotten how well FM simplex works when you are on top of a moorland hill with a 360 degree takeoff.
Good QSO with low power and small portable antennas, which can put out great signals in the right place and under the right conditions. I have worked mobiles and handheld all over the country on 2m including a station running 5 watts to an internally located 1/4 wave on a biscuit tin in Liverpool and mobiles in Spain during SpE condx.
ReplyDelete73 de G4TRA