Last year I was determined Covid-19 was not going to stop our club's unbroken 20-year odd record of running a station at Green point lighthouse for the ILLW event.We set up a very basic 100 watt HF station with a vertical whip and made contact with a handful of 40m stations. This year I thought, even though the lighthouse is closed, we could set up a small station on Saturday21 August . Over the last year I have become more interested in the QO-100 geostationary satellite that is capable of communicating with stations from Brazil to Thailand.
I have a dish that we can set up in the front of the Lighthouse with both an uplink antenna and an LNB for the satellite downlink. The station would probably require two operators as unfortunately I find The LNB can drift a little bit as it is not synchronised to GPS however it is perfectly usable and a lot of fun. It would be really good if we could cause some havoc on the satellite for a few hours from midday as I think we will be very popular on the satellite as not many stations will have a chance to communicate with a lighthouse station - pile up conditions! If you would like to operate the station you're more than welcome to.
I think I will sort everything out from about 11h30 a.m. with the aim to start transmission at about midday. ZS1S Paul will help with the battery and if anyone has a gazebo it might be a good idea to bring with them so that we can avoid the sun. Additionally if you'd like to set up a HF station alongside the QO 100 station you're more than welcome to and they may even investigate using DMR as well with the club's callsign so there's plenty of opportunity to do some operating if you so wish.
My only request is that if you do want to operate the satellite station please bring a second pair of headphones with a 3.5 mm jack so that I can tune the RX whilst you operate the satellite. For those that don't know, making contact with satellites it is traditional to give a grid square locator as well as RS report and additionally the reference for the Lighthouse which is Zulu Alpha 006.
There is no need to be nervous when operating the satellite as I will guide you with the correct procedure - I’ll write all this on a sheet of paper in front of you so you won’t forget. This would be a wonderful opportunity for RAE candidates to explore another side of amateur radio.
If you cannot make the event you can listen to us live by following the website below.
https://eshail.batc.org.uk/nb/
73
Chris ZS1CDG
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NB: This event has now taken place. A brief report is [here] and a more complete one will appear in our Ragchew newsletter of September 2021.