We had an excellent turn out for our first night at Pine Trees with over twenty members and visitors in attendance. It was also good to see our new intermediate licencees, Mark (ex-M6MEA) now 2E0ZPT and Jonathan (ex-M6HBS) now 2E0CTW, and Charles 2E0IMM.
Although our room is slightly smaller than the one in our previous venue, this brand spanking new building complex boasts an excellent, well lit car park with plenty of free space. The room we use is on the first floor which also has its own balcony, giving us a good take-off to the south and east.
Eager to explore the scope for balcony antennas, Rob, M0GKG, Kev G6FOP, Steve M0SPN and Phil M0PBZ managed to hastily erect an 8m fishing pole vertical. Although this was far from optimal, after some interfacing and configuration challenges with a MAC (pretending to be a PC) and our Kenwood TS590S, we managed to get on-air on 40m and worked several QSOs into eastern Europe using PSK31.
James, supplied everyone with a plentiful supply of nice cakes made by Mr.Kipling (I don’t know his callsign) and coffee was available too. Yes, we do have access to a kitchen.
Next week we will be giving our new projector an outing with a DVD presentation about the Five Star DX Association 2007 trip to St. Brandon Island, using the callsign 3B7C. Indeed some of you may have worked them.
Look forward to seeing you in the coming year.
Phil, M0PBZ
