BIWOTA 2023

GB0ACM - Ashby Canal Moira next to Moira Furnace Museum

Saturday 26th August & Sunday 27th August

Participants: Ian - G8VXG, Peter - G6KUI, Mick G8EHX, Paul - G1SGZ, Staefan - M0OSL, Connor 2E0EIY, Derry - 2E0RRF

Early start to the morning, with only the popup gazebo and radio gear to set up.

With prior antenna setup the day before by Stefan and Connor this made life easier and we were able to get active by 9:20am.

The station consisted of Yaesu FT-100D used for the HF station, with trapped dipole for 80/40/20m.

2m transceiver was an Icom IC-706 MK2G connected to a Diamond Tri-Band collinear.

Also with having 2 shack in the box radios if anything was to happen with either, we would be able to swap about and at least be able to be active on all available bands on the antenna’s that were available to us.

The start of the activation was a little slow going initially as we had a coffee and a good old natter with operators that had not been to this event station before. So FT8 was fired up with a couple of computer issues with the com ports deciding to wander when devices being plugged into the USB port. But soon we were up and running and ,making steady contacts.

HF became the focus of the main activity predominantly on 40m.

WX stopped play around midday with a thunder storm that rolled in, so as a precaution antennas were disconnected and it was once again brew time.

Quite a heavy down pour where at one point we actually thought we would have need a boat to continue to operate. Truly would have been inland waterways for us.

This soon subsided and operation then could continue.

We had a visit from a fellow ham, George M0URB a member of Loughborough and District Amateur Radio Club from Hathern meet up with us at the event. We had a good old natter about event stations and how with the ageing population of club members it was sometimes difficult to get the volunteers required to host such events. We offered to help each other out with operators / support teams at events.

This is something that previously done with our local club DADARS in the past to support each others events.

Pack down came around at 15:45 BST and it was journey back home to sort out 3 more Certificate of Participation for the sign ups that we had in the day. These were operators that had been chatting with registered operators that had previously signed up for the event. So word of mouth is also spreading the event far and wide. Logs gathered from the two laptops and uploaded to eQSL.cc and cleared down ready for Sunday's event.

Sunday

The morning started out with rain on the agenda, which isn't what we had ordered, but fortunately we were able to leave the popup gazebo and antennas in place from the day before.

Derry 2E0RRF, Connor 2E0EIY, Stefan M0OSL set up the radio equipment and we were joined a little later by Mick ready for operation. The rain was set in for the morning. We also had visitors Adrian M0OJR with his good lady Beryl and Steve M0OSI and his good lady Elizabeth also came along to gee us up with a bit of moral support.

Steve and Elizabeth were also planning on staying to the end after browsing the artisan craft fair at the venue. They had offered to help with the transportation of the equipment back to NHARG.

Steady progress on the band's worked and with a final of 6 BIWotA station in the log for the 2 days of our activity, we were really towing behind others in the event for the Award Scheme. We all had a good time over the weekend with some good laughs to go with it.

Our thanks goes out again to Moira Furnace Museum being our wonderful hosts.