Mills on the Air 2024

Mills on the air

11th & 12th May 2024  

Photograph Courtesy of Craig Waumsley

www.craigwaumsley.co.uk

Nunsfield House ARG participated in the Mills on the Air weekend which is the first outdoor event of the season for us. 

What a cracking start to the weekend, the whole of the country being able to see the Aurora Borealis in the evening of Friday 10th May and into the early hours of Saturday 11th May, unfortunatley our members did get chance to get a glimpse of them due to being in bed ready for an early start in the morning.

However, Craig shared three wonderful images on the Heage Windmill's Facebook page that he photographed 1:45am Saturday morning of the windmill in full glory of the spectacular natures light show.

Saturday morning we arrived, Peter (G6KUI) & Connor (2E0EIY) were the first to arrive at the site, followed by Stefan (M0OSL) and Derry (2E0RRF).

We errected the popup gazebo and started to unload the vehicles and set up the equipment and antenna systems, A game of hunt the mast hole, commenced which tooks us a little time, looking at images taken on mobile phones from previous events but with a little maintenance of the power sockets being moved slightly we had lost the bearings slightly, we did eventually find it.

It was not long before we were joined by Paul (G1SGZ) & Ian (G8VXG) to give an helping hand and Adrian (G1OXH) and with Emma his daughter, who supervised the whole set up and made sure we were behaving.

The section mast assembled housing the tri-band collinear followed by the fibreglass telescopic mast to house the centre of the trapped dipole inserted into the hedge line and a couple of lite duty section poles to supported each end of the dipole again mounted in the hedge line and clamped safely to the base of the hedge.

First things first, whilst we were checking over the equipment, we had to get the priorities right and that was to put the kettle on, and get a brew sorted out which Ian kindly offered up his services.

It wasnt long before we notice that the bands had taken a beating due to the high solar activity, which ment we were hopping about the HF bands using FT8 soley on the Saturday.

Although the activity on the bands was very poor, we did have excellent weather and we spent quite a bit of time outside of the gazebo having a good old ragchew. 

We packed down for the afternoon around 3:30pm.

Sunday morning Peter (G6KUI) & Connor (2E0EIY) and Stefan (M0OSL) & Derry (2E0RRF) arrived at shortly before 9am and unpacked the equipment and set up for operation.

It wasn't long before Mick (G8EHX) our chairman had arrived to join the group.

Conditions were a little better on the bands on the Sunday but still with limited activity compared to previous years. 

In total we topped out at 42 Voice contacts and total of 115 including the FT8 form the Saturday.

Our thanks go out to Heage Windmill once again for their hospitality.