Ron G4DIY and Jay M0UNN will be active from Guernsey as MP7DX during March 11-15, 2022. https://www.dx-world.net/mp7dx-guernsey/
Ron and Jay have asked me to keep amateurs informed about their progress, here goes. The team left from their homes in north west England yesterday and travelled to overnight on the south coast before taking a ferry from Poole to Guernsey today. Ron is a veteran of this crossing but the weather leaving Poole was nasty and for the first time in memory, a tug had to be deployed to steady the ferry and ensure safe passage for the vessel. The journey across the English Channel was lumpy to say the least and the pair were glad to see Guernsey looming, in much better weather and with much calmer winds. Taking advantage of the quadrangle in the Hotel they are staying in, the station was set up, as usual, in the rear of Ron's car, images to follow tomorrow, this allowed for the antenna and generator to be quickly set up on the shore to get the station up and running as quickly as possible. There was some trepidation about the recent glancing blow from a CME, but as soon as the first key went down on 20M, a pile up sprang into life and kept them on their toes. It has been constant from the word go with 20M bringing good contacts world wide, 30M saw good openings to JA and Asia at around 2100 local onwards. They are now finishing up on 40M before retiring for the night ready for the morning - they are unsure what time they will start as today has been a long one with travel etc.. At the moment, North America is hammering in on 40M, it was a similar story earlier as I spoke to Ron, Jay was running a pile up of JA/Asia, the signals are outstanding and the pile up is generally behaving well. For those who don't know the set up, the radio is an Icom 756 ProII fed to a Dentron linear amplifier, this in turn goes to a 1/4 wave vertical over a good (60 or more) amount of radials situated very close to the sea. All this is powered by a 240v generator, Jay and Ron take it in turns to operate, both are keen SSB and CW ops and are trying to give Guernsey to as many stations around the world as possible. They have a low noise floor and can hear the lighter stations as well as the big guns, keep trying, you will get them. They have around 750 QSO's in approximately five hours. UPDATE - just had a message from Ron, the pile up is still going strong but they will need to stop soon to be out and going for 0830 or thereabouts on Saturday. Please, if you need more info, reply to this thread or mail me: haworthkev@gmail.com All the best Kev M0TNX
MP7DX - Update from Guernsey. There has been some solar activity which has affected activity over the last couple of days. This resulted in a G2 class geomagnetic storm which has hampered things a little. Surprisingly, 40 metres yesterday afternoon produced large pile ups despite the geomagnetic storm and kept Ron and Jay very busy for a few hours. Now sitting at over 3500 QSO's since the pair arrived on the Island on Friday, they are delighted with what has been achieved and thank all those stations calling in. The team packed up the equipment this morning at 0130 local and were back on the air just over eight hours later with a strong run of VK, JA and a pleasantly surprising WL7 who called in amid the JA run on 20 metres. 30 metres has been steady with some peaks and troughs but 20 metres has really been the go to band, staying open well into darkness and providing the bulk of contacts. MP7DX will be QRV until 1600 on Tuesday 15th of March, they would love to hear you calling in and the virtually zero noise location allows them to work all classes/powers of station. The antenna and radial system at MP7DX Jay, M0UNN operating MP7DX They do get some local interest asking exactly what they are doing The location for the antenna
ahhhh wasn't Hauteville House available? also, Victor Hugo's would have been the perfect place to invoke the Spirits of Propagation around shack's desk. Glad ferry safely berthed during winter many islands remain... isolated, indeed! Oliver
