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Tuesday 25th June 2024

The time has arrived and we set off on our annual trip to Ham Radio, Friedrichshafen. Charles (M0OXO) once again kindly drove the car to London Heathrow where we had an overnight stay at the Premier Inn, Bath Road. Picking up Ady (G6AD) on our way through we had a nice trip from our home in the Midlands. 

Arriving around lunchtime at the hotel we had a short wait to get into our rooms. So we had a couple of drinks of coffee and then decide to have a beer to try and knock us out for some sleep. After checking in a meal in the bar area and early night was the order of the day ready for the 02:00 alarm to get to the airport for our flight departure of 6am.

Wednesday 26th June 2024.

When arriving at the airport the check ins didn’t open until 04:00 so a short wait before checking in, and then straight through security to our Swiss Air departure gate. 

Onto the aircraft and away we went, on time and in the air for 06:15.One hour and fifteen minutes later we arrived at Zurich Airport, disembarked the aircraft, collected our baggage, and into the train station. Tickets purchased and on the platform within 45 minutes of the plane touching down. 

The wait for the train was around 5 minutes, and with the usual efficiency we have come to remember of the Swiss rail service it arrived and our second leg of the journey began. What amazes us about the train service is how smooth and quiet it is within the carriage, both on the upper deck and lower decks there is hardly any noise, unlike the British train where it is clunky and noisy with running over the points and rail joints. After roughly one hour we arrive at our destination of Romanshorn, the interchange with the ferry across the beautiful Lake Constance.

The short 40 minute journey across the lake gave us time to get some refreshment. Both Ady and I chose to have Apple Pie and cream to take off the hunger before we went to dinner later that day, with a coffee for all 3 of us. If ever you are on the boat across Lake Constance on this journey then do try the apple pie, it was delicious, and one of the best I have ever tasted. Docking in FHN gave us the chance to walk through the town to our hotel, the Hotel City Krone, completing the whole journey from taking off at Heathrow to sitting outside the hotel in 4 1/2 hours. A record for us in our travelling time. We had a little wait before we could get into our rooms so we sat outside on the street tables, watched the world go by and had another coffee. Completely chilled and ready for the madness of the weekend.

At 15:00 (local) we were able to enter our rooms and drop our luggage. This gave us time to go for a walk and find somewhere to eat along the lake front, A beautiful promenade with bars and restaurants to one side, and their outdoor seating areas to the other, overlooking Lake Constance. The choice of many styles and tastes, this night we chose our favourite – Bella Vista – which is a gorgeous little Italian restaurant serving excellent food. Charles received a message from our friend Grant (VK5GR) had arrived at the hotel from Australia, a 38 hour journey for the 4 days in Friedrichshafen, and went to meet him before bringing him down to the promenade to join us. This gave Ady and myself the chance to have a sneaky beer while we waited. Charles and Grant arrived and we ordered some of the most beautiful food I have ever tasted, and it is no wonder we have made this our favourite.

Thursday 27th June 2024.

As we had planned this was the day we would explore the small town centre and visit the Zeppelin Museum in the town, this is also situated along the lake side and is a beautiful 1920’s art deco building. A very interesting and informative place, and it just reminds you of how far we have advanced with the technology in just over 100 years. I had always been under the impression that the Zeppelins were made as a war machine rather than a passenger aircraft, but the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg were both passenger aircraft that quite literally circumnavigated the earth. They were huge!! A model of the Airbus A380 (72 Meters long) was shown next to one of the airships (212 Meters) long and it looked tiny. The passenger cabins were small, but looked comfortable, and the public areas were plush with silver service for dining and waiter service for drinks – just showing the opulence of the era.  The images on here don’t do it justice.

Following this we went to the Messe (Exhibition Hall) to set up the IOTA (Islands On The Air)  table and get ready for the start on Friday. With this being the 60th Anniversary of the IOTA scheme the organisers DARC (Deutscher Amateur-Radio-Club), the national society of Germany, had constructed a special display with images of QSL cards and other information from many activations from the past. This was in the main foyer as you entered the show, and proved popular with many asking about the IOTA programme when they came into the hall and the stand.

There was not many on site when we arrived in the main hall, may be this being a working day for most they were still travelling to get there stands set up ready for the main event on the Friday and Saturday. EUDXF (European DX Foundation) were the first to arrive followed by the CDXC (Chiltern DX Club) from the UK the next, Chris (G4FZN) and his wife Pauline.
 

Today is the start of our journey to Ham Radio 2024, Friedrichshafen.

A journey that starts with Charles (M0OXO) leaving home at 05:00 to arrive at my house at 07:00, just having a coffee and catch up. Ady (G6AD) will be joining us shortly for the first leg to Heathrow for some fun plane spotting. We then get our flight to Zurich at 06:00 on Wednesday morning. A nice chilled relaxing trip from there on a train and a boat. 

Hopefully this year will see many old friends and new coming to say hello on the IOTA stand for the IOTA 60th anniversary. Hope all that are going have signed up for the IOTA dinner on Friday evening at the Zeppelin Restaurant. A week of good food and beer with lots of laughs guaranteed thrown in.

See you all there. 

ARRL outage – Update 22nd June 2024

ARRL staff continue to work with outside industry experts to ensure that all servers have been remediated, tested, and all data has been confirmed. We have also been working to ensure that the network is secure.

As noted in previous updates, Logbook of The World® servers and data are fine and working. LoTW® has dependencies on other servers, for example membership data, which have not yet been returned to service. We will announce when LoTW is open for user access. We anticipate that the queue will grow quite large once live, and we are evaluating ways to manage that potential issue.

As a reminder, 2024 ARRL Field Day <http://www.arrl.org/field-day> is this weekend. We note that some groups have scaled back or cancelled their outdoor plans due to excessive heat or severe weather threats. Please use caution this weekend (visit Heat.gov <https://www.heat.gov/> for heat and health information). Enjoy Field Day. The Field Day bulletin will be transmitted from W1AW and K6KPH as scheduled (see PDF schedule <http://www.arrl.org/…/Field-Day/2024/4_37-202420Sked.pdf>). Your Field Day results may be uploaded to https://field-day.arrl.org/fdentry.php or mailed to ARRL after the event.

This story will be updated with new developments.

Final countdown is on at Chateau G1VDP for the departure to FHN for Ham Radio 2024, as of Friday 21st June I have only 4 days until we go to London Heathrow for our flight to Zurich. All the paperwork is ready, my case is packed and we have been looking at the map of the Messe to see where the IOTA stand will be located. We are still in the DX Plaza but we have moved to the end and it looks like we will be on an “island”.  So please do pay the stand a visit and say hello, Ady G6AD may have a nice surprise for some of the first visitors, and we will have some special 60th anniversary souvenirs.

The following has today (4 June 2024) been posted on the ARRL website. Lets hope it is back up and running soon, but then it will probably crash with everyone uploading their logs.

ARRL Systems Service Disruption
06/04/2024
Updated 6/4/2024
On or around May 12, 2024, ARRL was the victim of a sophisticated network attack by a malicious international cyber group. ARRL immediately involved the FBI and engaged with third party experts to investigate.
This serious incident was extensive and categorized by the FBI as “unique,” compromising network devices, servers, cloud-based systems, and PCs.
ARRL management quickly established an incident response team. This has led to an extensive effort to contain and remediate the networks, restore servers, and staff are beginning the testing of applications and interfaces to ensure proper operation.
Thank you for your patience and understanding as our staff continue to work through this with an outstanding team of experts to restore full functionality to our systems and services.
We will continue to update members as advised and to the extent we are able.
This story will be updated with new developments.

Taken from Charles (M0OXO) website some interesting news for February 2025.

Following their successful journey to Guyana under the callsign 8R7X, the team is now setting their sights on a new destination in the Pacific region. Their next DXPpedition will take them to the Marshall Islands, scheduled for February 2025.

Stay tuned for more details as they become available. Additionally, the team is in the process of launching a website, which will soon be accessible.

Ranked #100 globally and #58 in Europe, the Marshall Islands hold significant allure, particularly for lowband enthusiasts worldwide.

Follow the team’s social media channels to stay updated on this thrilling adventure.

For the past week or so there has been no access to the ARRL Logbook of the World (LOTW) website, which is the number one site for online confirmations. It seems that some of their pages have been “hacked” by cyber criminals. Luckily, according to the ARRL website there is no data breach that could be harmful. But I would still advise any one who uses LOTW to change their password when it comes back online.

Last weekend (Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th May) members of the HARES club met at one of the other members houses – Tony, G7FSD – to get his antennas in the air for VHF, and to do a repair to his G3TXQ Hexbeam 40M element. The team consisted of Mark (2E0SBM), Ady (G6AD), Dave (G1VNB), Tony (G7FSD) and myself.

For safety and ease of working at a height on the Hexbeam we erected a scaffolding tower to allow us to lower Tony’s original mast and then erect a small tower to mount the antenna on. This was the hardest part, and we had to do some crafty engineering to lower the poles down safely, but with a little brain power and muscle it lowered easily. As soon as the Hex was at the height easily to work on we moved on to the VHF array so we could make room in the garden to sort out the Hexbeam.

This was going to be a lot easier as Tony had a wall mounted Tennamast that has a winch to assist with lifting to the vertical, and he had already attached all the necessary wall mounting brackets. A 2M (144MHz) 11 element cross yagi and a 11 element 70cm (340MHz) yagi were then mounted on a short pole and attached to the rotator, again which had already been mounted to the mast. With the mast now attached to the lower mounting point allowing it to be lifted easily, we connected the winch to assist with lifting. Again some brute force was employed to initially get it moving while Dave used the winch to assist to get it to the vertical. Once in place and bolted up we did a quick test to check all the antennas were still resonant with the analyser and we moved back to the Hexbeam.

This is where it got difficult. When the antenna was removed from the tower we started to lower it down, but with the trees and bushes it soon got caught up and took a lot longer than first anticipated. When we eventually got it down one of the spreaders snapped so I came home and grabbed a spare one I have and took that back to Tony’s. Ady also had to go to his place to pick up another part that we needed so we lost an hour working on the Hex.

During this time Mark, Dave, and Tony tested out the VHF array, and found an issue with the rotator – this had been working fine before going on to the mast as we had set it to the North – where it would only turn about 30 degrees. Testing showed that the rotator itself was trying to turn as this could be heard. So we stripped down the controller to find a nylon cog had broken and a potentiometer looked to be intermittent. This we left for Tony to get repaired.

As soon as we made the repairs to the Hexbeam it was late in the day, Tony had cooked some Pizzas and we relaxed for a short while before heading home to return on the Sunday to complete the job.

Upon arrival, I was a little late, Ady and Tony were already getting the cables ready and sorting out the final parts for the Hexbeam to get it back in the air. We lifted it to a point where we needed just one more body to get it to the top of the scaffold tower and into the rotator on the stub mast. A quick call to see if Mark could come and assist, and thank you to his lovely wife Lorraine she allowed him while she did the weekly food shop. So with Ady and mark at the top, Tony and I lifted the antenna up to a pivot point and they then lifted into the stub mast. Antenna in place and again checked with the analyser it was tidy up the cables and check with the radio.

Back in the shack a final check with the analyser and everything was way out of tune. Tests on the cable found a PL259 had come loose and was the cause of the problem. It also identified that Tony had the 2 cable runs – the 40M element has it’s own feed – had been mixed up and he had been using the damaged 40M element rather than the other 6 elements of the Hexbeam. With this now sorted we left Tony to play on HF and get another controller for his VHF array.

Tony commented that he had never been in a club of any sort before where other members were willing to give up their time at a weekend to help another member out. Not just a radio club but any other club he had been a member of. Our comment was, “well that’s what it means to be a member of a radio club”

I am a member of HARES and on the 1st May 2024 we had a night on the air and demonstration of digital modes by myself an Cezary (2E0HUP). We set up the HF radio and 2 laptops to show what can be done. A 40M end fed antenna in the school playground and the clubs Icom IC7300 for the RF part. I did a quick demo of  FT8 making contact with OH1FOL in Finland using 50W, and then let other members have a go and explain the features of the WSJT-X software.

Cez then demonstrated a phone app that decoded and can transmit FT8 which some members then downloaded and used to decode from the radio speaker. This encouraged them to have a go from Home. As can be seen from the images we also had time to chat and catch up with other happenings. 

We also put Mark (2E0SBM) in a cupboard to fit some N-Type plugs to the coax for the VHF/UHF antenna we have up at the school, we will be having an evening on the air again soon using these antennas, and maybe see if we can get some contacts using Meteor Scatter, which is bouncing the signal off the trails from meteors hitting the earths atmosphere. An enjoyable evening at our club.

We would also like to invite any one in the area to come and pay us a visit anytime, but especially on the 15th May 2024 (our next club night) for a presentation by Lee Volante (G0MTN) on the upcoming World Radiosport Team Championships 2026 here in England. This is where teams of 2 operators operate from the same area using virtually the same equipment in a contest. The teams are made up of operators who qualify over the previous 2 or 3 years qualifying contests. 

We meet every other Wednesday at 7pm local time. The venue address is

Burbage C of E Infant School