Thinking Day On The Air 2016 by Ken, G1NCG

Thinking Day On The Air 2016 by Ken, G1NCG

For me this is the start of the yearly special event stations, which I always look forward to, as we can show our hobby and to others and what Amateur radio is all about.

Our preparations where hastily put together but it all came together very well. I wouldn’t say a well oiled machine, just a bunch of like minded people that acted as a team. I would like to thank all those involved for their help and efforts put into this day. I think we’ve found some skills that some people didn’t know they were capable of.

We arrived at site on Saturday with the intention of putting antenna up but after installing the ropes to hoist antenna in the air we decided that it was possibly to windy to leave antenna in place over night and decided to install the antenna first thing Sunday morning.

We arrived Sunday morning around 9am to start the simple job of hoisting antenna into the air, Tony suggested we use a piece of Kevlar cord between the two ropes to give stability to the antenna. The antenna’s position was adjusted to put it’s feeder near to the entry point of the building. When the G5RV was tested it was found to be faulty so we quickly replaced it with another antenna which proved to work okay.

While the radio was set up and stations listened for we started the Brownies, Guides and Ranger on a small exercise of how to use the Phonetic code to spell their names to begin with and then a message, which was decoded and read out to show the use of the phonetic code. I know this is just simple exercise for us amateurs but to younger persons who had not used this before, it was interesting.

There were other exercises to show the Brownies, Guides and Ranger the world wide locations of Amateur Radio using QSL cards received and locations were checked on a map of the world. There was also a small demonstration of morse code using a crib sheet and a morse buzzer. There were several contacts made via the radio using the special event call sign “ GB1SGG” and each of the Brownies, Guides and Ranger had the opportunity to send greetings messages over the air to other Thinking Day on the Air stations. I think everyone had a good day and was enjoyed by all involved.

Andy G0UWS, Tony G4LDL, James M1DST, Mike M5CBS, Chris G4AJA and myself Ken G1NCG all participated in the event.

Of course we must give our thanks to the Guider and Brownies, Guides and Ranger who participated in the days events and allowing us to put on this special event station.