[UK-CONTEST] July 23cm UKAC - Report

[Ray James]

A tale of two halves this month.

The areas covering the south east to north east of England benefited with a troposheric duct across the North Sea into Sweden and Denmark but relatively poor conditions inland where the rest struggled whilst being on the wrong side of numerous weather fronts crossing the UK.
Despite that there were some above average signals from well equipped stations in the south and midlands but offset by a complete lack of lower ERP stations from the north of England and elsewhere.

For aircraft reflection observations I used a different website this month which permitted filtering of returns to only seeing jets in excess of 9,000 metres and despite expecting this time of the year to generate an increase in holiday traffic as well as the usual commuter flights, numbers at useful heights were in fact pretty poor. Paths were predominently to the west of the UK which would explain the lack of opportunities to pick up the elusive JO02 multiplier whereas IO81/IO91/92 contacts were far easier.

  CALL        #        Km
GM4GUF/P     IO85      39
GM4BYF       IO85      73     KST
GM4JR        IO85     111
GM4ZUK/P     IO86     159 CW
G3JYP        IO84     196 CW
GI6ATZ       IO74     199
GW8ASD       IO83     332
G3YJR        IO93     337 CW  KST
G3OHH        IO83     345 CW
G4AGE        IO93     361 CW
2E1EUB       IO92     367
G8OHM        IO92     425
G3VKV        IO81     475
G4BRK        IO91     517 CW  KST
G8DKK        IO91     518 CW
2E0NEY       IO81     521     KST
G4EAT        JO01     572 CW
G8KQW        IO91     588 CW

A map of contacts can be found at http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.rsgbcc.org/vhf/kml_files/2010/kdb94hf45e4YEsQI2Wv7qS1F8ezonLl

Equipment consists of an FT736R driving a DL2AM PA at 150w o/p and 4x44el.
SP23mk2 LNA and Ecoflex15 for the feeder and harness. CW filter is an antique Daiwa audio peak/notch filter I bought off GM4FDM years ago but still does a grand job!

73 Ray GM4CXM IO75TW