Contesting on the Mull of Kintyre takes a good bit of forward planning. Paul, G1GSN, Howard, G0VTL and Keith, G4ODA , all members of the Five Bells Contest group made the journey in two four-wheel drive vehicles. Including the loading up, the trip took a whole day. The site had been preselected after some earlier contest operations and discussions with a local farmer who informed them that other contest groups had used the site in the past.
While the site looked ideal at 300 ft asl, getting on it proved to be a problem since once off the track the vehicles were in danger of sinking into the boggy ground.
For power the group relied on a 2 KW generator powered by liquid gas. The unit proved to be fine for VHF although it did make noise at HF. This was not a problem since the team were there to participate in a four metre FM/SSB contest. The assembly of the two eleven element homebrew beams was quickly accomplished and the two antennas were mounted one above the other with one wavelength separation. The contest went well, even without access to a data link for the cluster. The radio equipment was a homebrew transverter and a homebrew amp.
They had arrived on site on a Friday to set up for the contest on Sunday. By 3 o’clock Sunday the contest had finished and by 4, the entire outfit was packed and ready to set off for home.
That’s organization!