Mills on the Air 2016

GB5HW Mills on the Air weekend 2016

May14th/15th 2016 - 09:00 to 16:00 on each day

Many thanks to Dave Ingledew (G8AXZ) for the drone footage

The club operates a portable station  from Heage Windmill in North Derbyshirehttp://www.heagewindmill.org.uk/ (DE56 2BH) as part of the National Mills Weekend organised by Denby Dale ARS http://www.mills-on-the-air.net/  

The purpose of the weekend is for amateur radio groups around the country to establish stations at as many windmills and watermills as possible and for other amateur radio enthusiasts and shortwave listeners to try to contact them.

The event station GB5HW was organised by Nunsfield House Amateur Radio Group as part of the Mills on the Air weekend where Water Mills and Windmills (operational or not) were the chosen locations for Radio Amateurs across Europe to participate in on air activations.

The weather at the weekend was stunning and the view of the countryside surrounding Heage windmill was excellent. We even had a spell of operating outdoors on the picnic table on the Saturday morning (some transmissions may have been muffled by bacon cobs!).

Over the weekend of operation we managed to obtain 128 contacts in the log over 2 days on 40m and 2m.  Check out our Interactive contact map

The station consisted of:

HF
Kenwood TS 870
Power setting 100 watts
40/80m Wire Inverted V Dipole
R5 Antenna (although not used as at the time 20m band didn't have much activity on.

VHF
Yaesu FT-736R
Power setting 25 watts
X300 Colinear

We would like to thank all of the stations that replied to our calls on air and the several operators that came along to meet us up at the site. Also thanks goes out to all the amateur radio operators and clubs that organised their own special events stations as part of the Mills on the Air Weekend 2016.