ROTA - Railways on the Air 2018

Great Central Railway have welcomed many other radio groups over the years but this is the first time in many that they have been able to facilitate our use of the site.

The site was set out right next to the ticket office and this gave us a view of the locomotives and the people that drive them. We were very spoiled here with there being a Coffee Shop just a few yards away and not to mention the Heritage Transport Museum (housing municipal transport vehicles galore), an indoor model railway in 00 Gauge and a larger Outdoor Minature Railway which is home a wide variety of track sizes and The Nottingham Society of Model and Experimental Engineers Ltd which is one of the oldest model engineering societies in the UK. Well worth a look if you are visiting!

The weather was very windy and more than a little chilly and wet. This had quite a negative effect of our HF contacts on the Saturday with only 47 contacts made over the course of the day 95% of these were made on 80m. We also operated on 2m and FT8 (20m) and had 15 and 25 contact respectively on these bands.

Sunday was called off due to the Amber weather warning that was issued for the area (even though come Sunday morning, the wind had dropped, the sun was out and it was actually a nicer day!)

Equipment for this years event. 

Kenwood TS-480SAT 100w with 80/40 wire Dipole

Yaesu FT736R for 2m running 25w with Tri band Collinear

Yaesu FT991 15w on R5 vertical antenna for FT8

Operators:-

Reg Moore - G1IWT

Paul Gamble - G1SGZ

Stefan Latimer - 2E0VKM

Connor Reeve - 2E0EIY

Richard Janezko - 2E0ZDY

Ron Jones - M6KQV

Many thanks to all the stations that called in and worked us on the Saturday and very special thanks to Great Central Railway for their hospitality and allowing us to operate from this location. We look forward to many more events with you.