Weather terrible, but band conditions good

Just in case you thought all I was doing was taking photos and blogging,
here's a photo of me operating on 20cw, with Liam on 40 SSB behind.

It's the second day of our operation at Gola Island and the EJ7NET team is in good form. The QSO rate on 20m and 30m CW this morning was pretty good. Declan EI6FR was first up (as usual!) and was on 30 cw. I joined a while later on 20 cw and found the going pretty good. There is slow fading of some signals but generally Europe and Russia were reasonably strong, and there was a good few QSOs from the UK as well.

The weather is terrible. It's raining heavily and has been for several hours. However, this has not dampened team spirits, especially with decent propagation. We are about to set up the 6 metre beam so hopefully we might make a few QSOs on that band during our activation.

We have passed 1,000 QSOs already which is great. We're hoping band conditions will remain good so that we can work as many of you as possible.

My view from the 20m CW station!

Annual IOTA trip is heading to Donegal this year

Gola Island off the NW coast of Ireland (© Bing Maps)

Tomorrow, Saturday 22nd August, I'm heading to a very special location with members of the EJ7NET Westnet Group. This year, we're activating Gola Island, off the County Donegal coast, for our annual island activation. It doesn't unfortunately, have its own IOTA designator, but is part of the EU-121 Irish Coastal Islands group. However, it is a rare island (I'm not sure if it's ever been activated before) and the Maidenhead Locator square is IO55tc.

This year's team comprises Declan EI6FR, Liam EI7DSB, Tony EI3HA, Gordon GM7WCO, Rolf HB9DGV, and me. We are planning to have a 6m station, so if there's any activity on that band we will do our best to work as many as possible. Band conditions in advance of the trip have not been wonderful. Let's hope the propagation picks up a bit over the weekend.

If not, we will probably spend a fair amount of time on 40m and 20m like last year on Cape Clear when conditions were poor. But we'll see. Depending on 3G/4G availability, I may be able to post updates on the blog, but I won't know that until I'm actually on the island tomorrow afternoon. So keep visiting back and if I'm able to post updates I will.

I will be bringing the camera equipment to take photos and videos. Hopefully I will be able to share some of these with you during the trip. If not, I will have to do a big blog upload afterwards!