wythall radio club

August is a quiet month ….

Stuck somewhere between the Summer doldrums and the slow awakening of the HF Bands those not familiar with the great outdoors and the challenges of SOTA/POTA/GOTA etc would take refuge in moaning about conditions and twiddling their thumbs.

BUT…..

Thanks to Lee G0MTN who set up the DXCC logging page  those green minded, energy saving operators at Wythall Radio Club invoked the spirit of January 2025 and the ‘How Low Can You Go’  campaign,  and for the month of August reduced power to as low 0.5 watts (500 milliwatts?) to see what could be worked.

Is this the ideal QRPP CW Radio? 2004 issue but still one of the best?? Discuss!

CW (of course) proved very effective and Chris G3YHF averaged an amazing 1597 miles per watt with his mostly 500 milliwatts whilst working 11 DXCC countries.

His most successful QSO’s were with Madeira (3158 miles) and Finland (2298 miles).

Meanwhile QRP obsessed John could not match the number of 0.5 watt successes of Chris but did manage one QSO with EA8URU on 500 milliwatts to give him 3635 miles per watt. He also boasted a 5dB spot from TI7W on 20m with 0.5 watts RBN (but we can all claim one way successes like that!!)

And so to digital where down on the south coast Kev G4XLO really set the pace with 37 separate DXCC worked on 2.5/5.0 watts FT8; the pick of his contacts were USA east coast and Kazakhstan with an overall average of 338 miles per watt for his 37 QSO’s

Martin , M0XFI used his 5 watts and 2.5 watts of FT8 to work 13 DX entities including the USA.

Well done to all who gave this a go and proof of the satisfaction to be gained from genuine QRPP contacts- and the continued potency of CW in reaching those parts of the globe that others can not reach…. well ok the potency of FT8 as well !!

There were no reported QRP voice contacts during this month.

AND SO TO THE COMING WEEKEND WHEN WYTHALL RADIO CLUB WILL BE REPRESENTED AT THE STOKE PRIOR STEAM RALLY OVER SATURDAY 20TH AND SUNDAY 21ST SEPTEMBER.

AT THE MOMENT TWO OPERATORS , NEIL G1TZC AND PHIL 2E0WTH WILL BE IN ACTION BUT MEMBERS AND INTERESTED PARTIES ARE INVITED TO POP IN , SAY HELLO AND EVEN OPERATE ONE OF OUR SPECIAL CALL SIGNS.

FIND US IN THE CORNER OF THE SITE NEXT TO THE RAILWAY LINE  (AND ALL OFFERINGS OF GOODIES WILL BE GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED BY PHIL AND NEIL!!)

www.shakespearesrally.com/stoke_prior.html