This months 144 VHFCC

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Tuesday evening I was once again active during the monthly VHF contest on 2m ssb. This months contest started off well and continued to be a good evening, I worked 29 stations in total over 2 and a half hours. I managed to make qso with Scotland, Isle of Man, Wales, Northern Ireland and England gaining 11 multipliers, 65461 points, with the furthest contact being G0XDI/P at a distance of 328KM in JO01KJ. As usual I was running the Yaesu FT-847 and 30 watts output power through the IOIo antenna fixed at 30 degrees elevation, 260m ASL.

Since I made the latest antenna I have noticed significant improvements to signals making the normally unworkable weak signals sound much stronger. It is amazing what difference can also be achieved by installing good quality low loss coaxial cable as feeder. I did this the last time I fiddled with the antenna.

This year has been the first year that I have taken the RSGB 144 activity contest serious and considering the majority of other ops are running more power and have some nice big arrays, I've been very pleased with the results so far.

The new antenna has also been working well for me again with the Satellites, last night I managed a couple of nice QSO on AO-51 and once again I was very strong into VO-52. I am hoping to get some time in and receive some ISS SSTV images that are being transmitted from the space station over the weekend.

That's about it for now, oh yes I nearly forgot. I am now the proud owner of another Toyota RAV4 which is now fully kitted out with the FT-857 and mono band antennas. Pictures to follow on next post in the very near future! 73

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