Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>> DOM: Well first of all, an apology:
This presentation is down in the programme as being co-presented
by Martin G3ZAY.
We only got back from Miquelon at about this time last week,
So, this has been a rather hastily put-together presentation, and it
just worked out easier if only one of us were doing it.
We didn't really have too much time, so
apologies that you have to put up with my voice for the next 45 minutes.
>> AUDIENCE: Boo
[laughter]
>> GAVIN: Sorry, what was your voice again?
>> DOM: So, as I say, we spent
most of the week before last on Miquelon.
Where is Miquelon?
Miquelon is an island just to the South of Newfoundland
off the Eastern coast of Canada.
It's actually two islands: Saint Pierre et Miquelon
Saint Pierre is the smaller island,
which has a population of roughly 6000
(that's because it has the better harbor)
then this long island is jointly known as Miquelon-Langlade:
Langlade being that bit, and Miquelon being that bit.
They are joined together.
Our operating QTH was up where that big arrow is,
up on the Northern tip of Miquelon
and that's for reasons that will be described in a moment.
So, a bit of history about Miquelon --
Saint Pierre et Miquelon, in fact --
These are two islands that, for a long time,
were squabbled over by Britain and France.
In 1815, following the death of Napoleon,
France took over the islands, and they have been French ever since.
They are not part of Quebec,
and the inhabitants there, who are French citizens,
are very proud of the fact that they speak 'proper' French, and
not the bastardized version that their friends down the St. Lawrence Passage
tend to speak.
So, this is actually part of France
and the main industry there was obviously fishing
for most of the nineteenth century
then, in the 1920s and 1930s, with prohibition in the United States,
this was a smuggler's paradise for getting alcohol into the United States;
a nice bit of France just helpfully off the coast.
Ever since then, they seem to have had a rather turbulent history, and
basically they're going through some pretty bad times at the moment.
There is the possibility of oil nearby
but France, a few years ago, in an International Court ruling,
lost a lot of the sea territory that it was claiming around the islands,
so that may or may not happen.
So, a lot of their reliance is on tourism,
although it's not the easiest place to get to.
So, why did we go there?
Three reasons -- our motivation:
First of all, it's a DXCC entity.
It's a DXCC entity, and it's an IOTA.
So, there's lots and lots of people wanting QSOs
It's fairly regularly activated -- it's not super-rare --
on the other hand, because of how propagation has been for the past few years,
there are lots of people wanting it, especially on the higher bands.
The second reason was the motel.
The motel is the big long building in the second picture there.
The Motel de Miquelon is the most ham-radio- friendly place you could ever go to.
It's a wonderful resource;
and, most importantly, there is a big ham-radio store cupboard
full of equipment,
so you can basically just turn up; you take some stuff with you;
we'll cover more of that later,
but there's a lot of stuff already there
so there's no need to ship out containers in advance.
[laughter at T32C reference]
The third reason: Santa Claus.
More precisely, Martin G3ZAY had been to Miquelon twice before,
and last Christmas he got a marketing Christmas card from the motel,
saying they hoped that he would be back soon.
So, this was the justification; it was about the time that we were wondering what to do
for our next Cambridge University Wireless Society trip, 0:04:35.000,0;04:38:000 so, having had this invitation, we thought
that it's about time we took a larger group out to Miquelon.
How do you get to St. Pierre et Miquelon?
Well, in the summer, there is, very usefully,
a direct Air Canada flight from Heathrow to St. John's
so, that's fairly easy,
except that summer schedule finished while we were out there
so we couldn't come back that way.
So, flying out there was easy: Heathrow to St. John's
and then Air Saint Pierre operate a plane - this ATR - from
St. John's to St. Pierre, and then, for getting to Miquelon,
the plan had been to use a small Cessna;
basically, Air Saint Pierre have a small Cessna
and, even if things aren't on the schedules,
and the flight doesn't really exist,
if there are enough of you, it can happen.
So, after a few email exchanges, and a little bit of worry on Martin's part,
arising from the fact that we didn't have tickets, or anything like that,
we had planned to go on the Cessna.
Unfortunately, September, North-West Atlantic, the weather isn't exactly reliable,
and, this was actually when we were leaving,
but it was exactly the same situation when we went there,
it was too foggy for the Cessna to fly.
We got to Saint Pierre OK, the runway there has ILS,
but we couldn't take off in the Cessna and get over to Miquelon.
So, the other option, was taking the boat.
Fortunately, the French government subsidize a very nice boat,
so you can actually get across to Langlade
but this did mean we had an unscheduled stop-over night
in St. Pierre itself on the way out.
Once we got to Langlade,
the boat couldn't land at Langlade,
so we had to transfer everything, including us, into these Zodiacs
and there were several back-and-forth trips to get everything across to Langlade.
And then we all jumped in the back of a pickup truck
and, sitting in the back of the pickup truck,
you'll see later, we had a very fun journey
all the way up Langlade, and into Miquelon itself.
So, I've said 'we' several times.
Who is 'we'?
Running top-left to top-right it's:
Martin G3ZAY, Simon G4EAG, myself
Rob M0VFC, Tom M0TOC -- who was here yesterday, but isn't here now --
and Gavin M1BXF
so there were six of us altogether on the trip,
and so that's who 'we' were.
>> G3ZAY: FP/G3ZAY, QRZ?
>> M0VFC: M0VFC
>> G3ZAY: M0VFC, 59
>> M0VFC: 59, thank you.
>> G3ZAY: FP/G3ZAY, QRZ?
>> M0BLF: M0BLF
>> G3ZAY: M0BLF, 59
>> M0BLF: Yeah, you're also 59 but I haven't got your call.
>> DOM: The purpose of these audio recordings will become clear later on.
So, anyway, the stations we were using in Miquelon.
Because we had the possibility of going in the Cessna, although we didn't eventually use it,
we had to travel fairly lightly.
Air Saint Pierre were wonderful; they said
if you were in the Cessna, and you had too much luggage
we could bring everything out the following day, on the next flight.
It wasn't a problem
but we wanted to travel fairly light.
So, as I say, fortunately, a lot of the equipment was already out there,
so we basically didn't need to worry too much about antennas.
The stations we took ourselves:
An IC-706, an Elecraft K3, an IC-7000 and an FT-450.
Two of the stations had amplifiers, one of the amplifiers of course was already in Miquelon,
at the motel, the other one we took out with us:
a fairly large homebrew amplifier that had been made by a friend in Cambridge.
If you heard us on, you might be aware we were using six different callsigns.
We were all operating under our own callsign and I realize this might have been a bit odd.
So, the reason for this was, we had been told by the Icelandic licensing authority back in 2005,
they pointed out to us that it isn't legal to use club callsigns under CEPT.
So, we couldn't use the G6UW callsign under CEPT.
So another option might have been, of course, to just use one our callsigns
but it turns out you can't do that under CEPT either,
or at least not under the French interpretation of CEPT.
Another option might have been to get a special event callsign,
but FP special event callsigns are no longer issued and the only ones you can get are TO prefixes,
which could be anywhere.
So the obvious solution for us to say we were in St. Pierre, was for us to all use our own callsigns,
even if that did confuse people a little bit.
I've mentioned the Motel de Miquelon's stash of equipment.
This is some of it, that the owner of the Motel found on our third day.
She sort of came running out to us one lunchtime saying,
"I've found some more equipment",
and this is what she'd found.
Underneath one of the bedrooms, there's a big load of fiberglass poles,
scaffolding, aluminium tubes,
everything you might need to put up antennas.
There's another walk-in cupboard, with shelving units,
that had the amplifier in it,
and all sorts of other things.
There is a list, which is maintained by visitors who go to the island, with exactly what's there...
we think.
Having said that, shortly after this photo was taken, the Manageress of the Motel said:
"actually, you should come down to the bar cellar".
So we went down to the bar cellar.
It was a typical bar cellar.
Lots of pipe work, cooling units, everything like that, all in front,
and there were some shelves and, behind all this,
there were some bits of metal.
So we sent Rob in to crawl past all the pipework behind the bar, and find what was there.
It was only a 6m beam and also a satellite antenna for 2m and 70cms.
So, there's all sorts of stuff there.
We're still working on finalizing the inventory,
but it makes operating from there fantastic.
>> M0VFC: FP/M0VFC, QRZ?
>> M0BLF: Lima foxtrot, Lima foxtrot
>> M0VFC: LF, 59
>> M0BLF: Lima foxtrot, Lima foxtrot
>> M0VFC: Yeah, the LF, 59
>> M0BLF: Ahh, thank you, from M0BLF, you're 59 59 from M0BLF
>> M0VFC: Yeah M0BLF, thanks, 59, QRZ?
[laughter]
>> DOM: So, we managed to make a fair few QSOs while we were out there.
Just a straw poll, put your hands up if you managed to work us.
Wow, that's fantastic. Great, OK.
>> GAVIN: I worked Martin
[laughter]
I notice Rob put his hand up. I won't ask about that one.
Conditions were fantastic. We were very fortunate when we were there.
Solar activity was excellent and the higher bands did really well.
We had openings on 10m and 12m better than I can remember them since the last solar maximum.
It was really great. We had some fantastic DX too.
There was one VK4 who emailed us in advance of us going and said he'd been trying for
ages and ages to make a QSO on 12m and 10m.
We didn't manage to make the QSO with him to VK4 on 10m,
but we did manage 12m, which is just about antipodes from FP,
and also a good opening for JA just after our dawn, around 10z, on 40m.
Martin had some nice JA CW pileups. So, really great conditions.
No major problems with aurora.
There were a couple times when there was a bit of fluttering around but generally it was excellent.
[laughter]
Patricia, the lady here,
is the Manageress of the Motel de Miquelon and she is amazing.
The most helpful owner of a motel you could ever come across.
She not only massaged Rob while he was operating,
[laughter]
but also, we phoned in advance to try to sort out some of the arrangements for us going,
we said: 'we're going to be bringing various bits of radio equipment with us.
We don't really want to bring a whole weeks' worth of clothes, is there
a laundrette nearby?'
'Oh, no problem, give me all your dirty washing,
and I'll have it done.
Sure enough, we gave her some dirty washing one night,
we went into the bar, and gave her a dirty laundry bag,
the next morning we had everything ironed and folded for us.
Before we got out there, one of the previous groups had left a
fiberglass fishing pole, with a vertical for 40m and 15m up,
and the hurricanes that come up from the Caribbean tend to go up the Eastern Seaboard,
and, sort of, make fairly close hits on St. Pierre et Miquelon.
And we were a bit concerned.
Again, the same phonecall asking about the laundry, we said,
'is this thing still up?',
because we knew it can been left up. 'Is it OK?'
'Oh yeah, one of the top sections has collapsed but, no problem, I've already been out
and I've tightened up all the guys for you,
so it's all stable.'
How many motels would do that?
Absolutely brilliant.
We hope she's still going to be there.
We gather that she's about to have her contract up for renewal,
she doesn't actually own the motel,
and if she goes, it will be a great loss to the hobby.
But hopefully, whatever happens,
the motel will still be available for amateur radio
and the cupboard will still be there.
>> G3ZAY: FP/G3ZAY QRZ?
>> M0VFC: M0VFC
>> G3ZAY: M0VFC 59
>> M0VFC: 59 thanks
>> G3ZAY: 73 Rob, FP/G3ZAY QRZ?
>> M0BLF: M0BLF
>> G3ZAY: M0BLF 59
>> M0BLF: Erm yes, FP/G3ZAY, you're 59 59.
My handle is Dom, and I'm in Cambridge in England.
I wonder whereabouts you're located,
and is this some sort of contest?
>> G3ZAY: Erm, negative. No, this isn't a contest,
and we're on Miquelon island, QSL?
>> M0BLF: Oh, I see. Miquelon island.
I wonder where that is?
Well I'm running here an IC-706 with 100W out to a G5RV,
it's been a rather gorgeous day here.
Temperature's about 16 degrees but it was quite fresh this morning.
Well you've got a big pileup going,
there's lots of people calling,
but perhaps you'd come back with your name for the log,
and tell me where Miquelon island is?
I've never heard of that place.
FP6/G3AY... FP3/G3 er... no, I've lost it.
Your call's a bit long for my brain I'm afraid.
[laughter]
>> DOM: So, we were on this fairly small island of about 600 inhabitants.
How did they view us?
Well, you might have gathered by now that they're fairly used to
ham radio operators going out there.
This year there's been I think two groups of Americans
who've been out there before us, 0:16:44.000,0:16:47.000 there's another group going we think for CQ worldwide, 0:16:47.000,0:16:51.000 so they're fairly used to us 0:16:51.000,0:16:54.000 but for some reason, our particular expedition, 0:16:54.000,0:16:56.000 because there were six of us, 0:16:56.000,0:16:58.000 they've never had quite that many people, 0:16:58.000,0:17:00.000 we broke the record for the number of vertical antennas 0:17:00.000,0:17:01.000 lined up along the beach: 0:17:01.000,0:17:03.000 we had eight, 0:17:03.000,0:17:06.000 so, they were quite excited 0:17:06.000,0:17:08.000 and the local TV company decided 0:17:08.000,0:17:10.000 they would come and pay us a visit.
[...]
That was some really great publicity for the hobby,
and we were really really pleased that they took that interest.
They came out, they spent two hours or so with us, and,
OK, so it meant our QSO totals fell off one afternoon,
but it was really really great to have
that sort of publicity and that interest
from the locals.
>> AUDIENCE: Where was that shown? Was that just on local TV there?
>> DOM: That was local television there,
but it is also on the France Televisions website nationally.
So the equipment.
I said we were mainly using verticals,
lined up on the beach,
in fact they worked really, really well.
We didn't actually have too many problems with them either.
One of the antennas actually was a Stepp-IR vertical,
which had been left by a previous group,
so there is still one up on the beach,
if anyone wants to go and use it,
but for the others we put up fiberglass poles.
As you see, one of them wasn't very happy.
We had great problems on 80m.
That was our main problem band.
We had lots of local noise: S7,
which was really a big struggle for us
and the antenna, as you see, fell over and broke.
We also made a few mistakes.
We might have got the wrong leg of a dipole at one point,
and ended up having one leg of dipole along the ground
and one of the radials up in the air,
so that may be why it didn't work too well.
Actually, the ground there,
the dry cobble beach,
was so perfectly bad as an earth,
that it was perfect on the mini-VNA,
even when the radial was up and the dipole leg was down,
so that was interesting.
We also had another potentially more serious problem.
Tom M0TOC had actually gone ahead of us to visit family,
and he's a train buff,
so he wanted to take a very, very long train journey
all the way up through New England,
up to Montreal, and then all the way across to St. John's.
Several, several hours of train journey.
But while he was in Montreal,
unfortunately someone decided to take a knife to his bags,
rip them open, and remove two of our power supply units.
Completely useless out there, of course, because it's 110V,
but we still had this email from Tom about
two days before the rest of us left, saying:
'I've lost these two Power Supply Units',
so Martin had to make a very quick trip down to Martin Lynch
to find some replacements on the way to Heathrow.
The other problem we had,
and I don't want to dwell on this too much,
really focuses on CW operators.
I, personally, am not a great CW op.
I can quite happily have an exchange with you:
I'm quite happy to exchange callsigns,
and I'm quite happy to exchange serial numbers.
I'm really bad at pileups,
and my enthusiasm for the mode isn't great enough
to make me want to go and do pileups better.
In previous trips, that's been fine:
CQ call, a couple people come back to me,
tick them off one by one,
a gentle feed through of people.
Once you start getting spotted,
and people start coming,
then I can hand over to another operator, something like that.
That didn't happen on this trip,
and the reason it didn't happen was the Reverse Beacon Network.
One CQ call, you get spotted immediately,
forty people try to call me.
I can't cope with that,
and it was a really big problem.
I was the only person who was prepared to
get up at 3 o'clock in the morning to try to work the EU dawn shift,
the EU dawn opening on 80m,
and I was going back to bed 5 minutes later,
just because I couldn't cope with the pileups.
So, as I say, I don't want to dwell on that,
but CW ops might like to think about that,
as it's something that maybe needs fixing.
I'm all for technical innovation but it shouldn't make our lives harder.
Another thing we were able to do was actually to help the locals.
This is Jean-Pierre, FP5CJ if I remember rightly.
He has a nice shack in the center of St. Pierre,
he actually shares it with his next-door neighbor, who's also licensed,
they have a shared tower between their houses,
but Jean-Pierre's dipole for 40m had sort of gone that way up in a storm,
so he's not been able to use 40m.
So, on our way back from the island,
Rob decided that safety gear wasn't required,
and he'd just quickly shimmy up the mast and
>> G3VFC {Rob's Dad): That's my boy!
>> DOM: and he'd just push the dipole round
and come back down fairly quickly again.
So we were able to help Jean-Pierre, which was fantastic.
[...]
>> GAVIN: Jean-Pierre's wife came out to take a quick photo when we were there,
not realizing Rob was up on the mast, she said:
'everyone get together, the six of you',
she took the photo and went
'there's not six of you, where is he?'.
We had to point and 'aaarghhh'.
[laughter]
>> DOM: but it was great to be able to help a local ham like that,
particularly given all the help we'd had from the motel.
The other thing we did was, we had a social media strategy.
There are lots of people who will claim that social media strategies are good,
and there are lots of people who are completely wrong about that.
But we've been using social media on our activations for quite a while.
In 2007, a CUWS trip was, we think, the first DXpedition on Twitter,
back when Twitter was still something only geeks knew about,
and, I think it was 2009 when we were in Portugal,
was the first time I was live video-blogging on YouTube during the activation,
so people could watch what we were doing, as we were there.
This time, we decided to turn it into a strategy
and we had two firm objectives for this:
The first thing is, there are a lot of VHF-based radio-hams around Cambridge,
who aren't really HF DXers.
We wanted to get them involved.
Second thing is: Rob and I work in the same software company,
statistically we're probably pretty good for the number of radio hams,
out of total employees of 230, we have 4 licensed people,
but we have an awful lot more geeks who probably could be good radio hams.
So we wanted to get them involved as well.
So we actually set up a whole strategy
on how we were going to be using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube during the activation,
so that people who don't have licenses can get involved,
and so that people who are only VHF operators can be involved.
So one of the things we did was we set up,
in the 10 days prior to leaving, a quiz.
And local hams could actually answer the questions to the quiz
but the only way to enter it was by making an SSB QSO with us.
So we had all these VHF-types around Cambridge,
watching our Twitter stream, and answering these questions,
and the only way they could give us the answer
was they had to make an SSB QSO with us.
And we got lots of the VHF-types around Cambridge making QSOs with us as a result.
Likewise, as a result of the stuff we were putting on Facebook and Twitter,
I've had loads of people come up to me at work,
and I suspect Rob has as well,
since we've been back, saying things like:
'So how do you send out QSL cards?
Do you send them through the post and does it cost loads of money?'
These people, a week ago, didn't know what a QSL card was,
and they've been exposed to it, and they're learning about it,
so now the next stage is to, probably in the next few weeks,
Rob and I will put on a presentation at work, about ham radio,
and then lead it into a Foundation course.
So we actually had a strategy.
We were using these tools available to us during the DXpedition
to try and promote amateur radio.
And, as I said, the other thing we were doing was
-- and we did it less than I had wanted --
video blogs every day, explaining what we were doing each day.
The reason it was less than we'd wanted was,
we were doing video editing on my laptop,
which ended up logging on one of the stations,
so we had to take a station off-air to do the editing, which wasn't ideal,
but this is the sort of thing we were putting up:
[...]
Yeah, there might have been a bit of ESP there I think!
[laughter]
You know, this video was on YouTube about two hours after that QSO.
It took me an hour to edit the video maybe.
And our colleagues saw that, and it's a really great way
of showing them what we were doing on our time off work.
I'd seriously recommend to any DXpedition to investigate doing this sort of thing.
>> G3ZAY: FP/G3ZAY QRZ?
>> M0VFC: M0VFC, M0VFC
>> G3ZAY: Er, M0VFC, 59 I think.
>> M0VFC: Roger, you're, 59, 59
>> G3ZAY: Roger, Roger. FP/G3ZAY QRZ?
>> DOM: That's the last of those audio clips,
you might have gathered by now,
this was the operating styles and practises
that really annoyed us when you're trying to work a pileup.
We didn't want to name and shame anyone,
so we took some time on 2m SSB during last week,
to pretend to be on FP, and, between the 3 of us, we just recorded those.
Obviously I'm preaching to the converted here,
but it's really really frustrating any of these operating styles,
when you're working a pileup.
So, how did we do?
Well, we made a fair number of QSOs.
These numbers are out of Win-Test.
Because we were using six different callsigns,
and Win-Test is designed for contests,
these numbers are all excluding the dupes,
i.e. people who worked different people on the same bands and the same mode,
so the numbers are actually higher than these,
but this is the breakdown of the number of QSOs we made.
As you see there, excluding dupes, just short of 15,000,
the actual QSO total was 17,520,
we worked people in 124 different DXCC entities,
9,272 different callsigns in the log,
and there were 74 people who managed to work all six operators.
So that was really great, and we really appreciated all those QSOs.
And, as I say, it's the first time in years,
since I can remember that we've done DXpeditions,
that we've had over 1000 QSOs on those top two bands,
which is fantastic.
So, we're coming to the end now.
What's the conclusions, or the messages I'd like you to take away?
Well basically there are three:
Mastery. We learnt some new skills,
and I'm sure all of us improved and learnt a lot from the trip.
Miracle. Almost everything worked.
All the transport connections worked,
even the slightly complicated one on the way back,
which involved Miquelon to St. Pierre, St. Pierre to St. John's,
St. John's to Halifax, Halifax to Heathrow,
four different timezones involved,
and not a great amount of time for changing planes in some of the places,
It all worked and that's really thanks to Martin's excellent planning,
and having all these backup scenarios:
What happens if it's misty?
Will the flights work at the right times to be able to get the boat as an alternative option?
So, thanks Martin for all that planning that went into that.
And the final one was mobilization.
We're all eager to get away to somewhere next.
We don't know where yet.
We will, most of us, be on the Camb-Hams trip next April to the Scottish islands,
but we'll have to see where the next CUWS trip will take us.
So, that's it!
All that remains now is the QSL cards.
They'll be off to the printers very shortly indeed,
and we will get the QSL cards out as soon as possible.
So thanks very much.
I reckon we have five minutes for questions.
>> DOM: What's the budget like?
>> G3ZAY: Can I just thank the Rockall team for waiting until I got back for before they activated it?
[laughter]
>> DOM: So, any questions?
>> AUDIENCE: What's the budget like?
I reckon it's probably fair to say it was about 1000 pounds / head?
1100 pounds, something like that.
Obviously the flights were the main expense there.
We had one current student of the University with us
and fortunately he was able to get a travel grant from the University to cover some of that,
and, otherwise expenses were biased slightly in his favor, shall we say,
but it worked out at about pounds 1100 a head.
>> GAVIN: The motel was 255 euros
>> DOM: The motel was fantastic value and we ate at the motel three of the nights we were there,
the food was excellent, and it didn't cost anything at all basically.
It was really good.
>> GAVIN: It's worth pointing out they take Euros on the island
>> DOM: Yeah, the island is part of France. It does use Euros.
Anything else from anyone?
>> NIGEL (G3TXF): Did you put all the stuff nicely back in the cupboard,
nice and tidy after you left?
>> DOM: Yes we did.
>> NIGEL: Including my Stepp-IR?
>> DOM: Oh, it's yours? Well thank you very much!
[laughter]
No, the Stepp-IR vertical is still out on the beach
because it wil be used by the CQ worldwide team, at the end of October.
They will almost certainly take it down.
We had to do a quick modification to get the motor working again, it had seized up a bit...
>> MARTIN: No, it was a cable fault in the end.
>> DOM: Oh, OK, I think I was operating at the time so I didn't hear the full story.
>> NIGEL: Yes, it is 4 years old now; it's done very well.
So that was excellent, thanks for that, and we left some more...
>> MARTIN: two more fiberglass poles, two more runs of coax, and some more wire.
>> DOM: So there's even more stuff now in the storage cupboard.
We have the current copy of the inventory.
We'll get that to the guys who are going out for CQ worldwide,
and then hopefully it will carry on circulating.
>> G3VFC: I'd just like to applaud the way you've brought this into focus for non-amateurs,
with a view to getting more people into the hobby,
I think that's absolutely great.
>> DOM: Well thank you very much. Obviously, the TV report did help with that,
and we were very fortunate that happened, but it's easy.
We've got these social media tools out there,
there's absolutely no difficulty to do it at all,
it requires very little time investment to do it,
and it's a great way of getting people involved.
>> AUDIENCE: Is there a radio in the store cupboard?
>> DOM: There is not currently a radio in the store cupboard,
but it is something we are investigating.
There is a linear amplifier.
>> AUDIENCE: So it just needs a small radio or something, in your carry-on bag?
>> DOM: Yes, so as I said, we had a 706 and an IC-7000 with us.
Both of those are really small, nice mobile rigs.
>> MARTIN: The K3 was in my carry-on
>> GAVIN: So was the 450, mine.
>> AUDIENCE: So it's perfect then, isn't it?
>> ROB: All the radio kit you can carry.
>> NIGEL: Did you use any filtering?
>> DOM: Yes, we had Dunestars. The CUWS set of Dunestars that we use for contesting.
>> NIGEL: They are essential in that sort of environment.
>> DOM: Yeah, exactly.
Nothing else?
Well thank you all for coming, and,
if you have any problems, feel free to ask any of us offline.
Thanks.