On Saturday 4th August 07 James MØBOV and myself went out to operate for few hours of portable/mobile operation.
We headed up to East Clandon near Guildford.
I setup on a picnic table and put up my SotaBeam on my 9m pole for 2m operation. James operated from his car after setting up his 5m pole with a di-pole on HF.
The external battery pack even with a full charge over last few days it was losing power fast. The internal FT-897 power pack had only 30mins of what should have been 4 hour charge as forgot to charge during week. Still was enough to give me a short contact with Wimbledon and District Amateur Radio Society (GX3WIM) Annual Club Camp. Locator was IO91SF.
As bands were poor (and my batteries were flattening fast) we decided to move on. Headed over to National Trust’s Newlands Corner (IO91RF) and Ranmore Common (IO91TF). Newlands Corner looks good. As well as a free car park, also has shop and amenities, and loads of space to operate.
Lessons Learned
- Make Sure ALL Batteries are Charged
- Try to pick a day when others are not likely to be out as well
- Contacts may have been increased if we hadn’t picked the sunniest day for a long while
- Make a list of possible contests. If we had known, there was actually one starting later that day
- Take Handheld Radios
- Forgot last time and this time (although not really needed this time, could have been useful)