I am heading to Steepholm Island in the middle of the Bristol Channel on Sunday 20th August and plan to operate SSB on the 40m and 20m HF bands from around 10:00 UTC. I will also have my FT70 handy with me which I will couple to my Slim Jim and so can operate a little on 2m also. This will be an opportunity for operators to grab a rare(ish) WAB square and that elusive IoTA reference too.
Here’s the details…
I will be using my IC-7300 with a 40m EFHW antenna held up by a 6m fibre glass telescopic pole (as seen in some of my other blog posts when out on my motorcycle), all powered by an UltraMax LI-22 LiFePo4 battery. I hope to be operational from around 11:00 BST on and off for several hours through the course of the day up until late afternoon, the boat returns to collect visitors at the next high tide so I am on the island for 12 hours in total. I am also an amateur photographer and with Steepholm being a bird sanctuary I’ll also be walking around and togging away in between calling CQ on some of the bands. All this is band conditions and weather permitting too of course, and despite wanting to focus on 40m and 20m, I will try various other bands as well.
I will of course write up a full blog post update once I have returned from my trip. If you hear me on air, please do give me a shout as I’d love to get you in the log.
It appears as though I may have underestimated the level of interest in my little expedition as I have had enquiries from many amateurs over the last few days since mentioning the trip on my Calling CQ Facebook group.
As someone once said in a famous film many years ago… “I may need a bigger boat [battery]…!!!“… 🤣
Wish me luck…