Mobile challenge; Work All Continents - in a day!

A friend of mine, a mad keen mobiler and contester, set the challenge by doing it himself recently, spurred on by his achievements I decided to see what I could do myself.

Mobile WAC in a day? Done!

I managed to work the following areas and land masses that make up the continents:

Europe
Africa
Asia
North America
South America
Australia
Antarctica
Arctic Circle

And a few Islands in those areas too, bringing my mobile DXCC up to 69 for the month so far, and I haven't had a real crack at the EU yet, focusing more on the rarer parts of the EU, I'll save the rest for 6m Es

For those that got a chance, and whilst the bands may not have been on fire yesterday, they were open to all parts of the globe at some time or another.

The Scorpion SA680 has been worth the weight (sic), and investment, so far.

More aero mobile

I've worked almost 1,000 stations so far in the couple of months I've been active aeronautical mobile, so I thought it only fair to add some information about the aircraft and the equipment.

The aircraft is a Boeing B757-200 with an Allied Signal / Rhode & Schwarz 400W transceiver installed. There are a number of items in the system including an audio selector panel for radio selection, PTT, and volume control, then the radio control panel which has frequency selection, mode control (AM/SSB), then transceiver, antenna coupler and finally antenna. The antenna is one section of the vertical stabiliser leading edge and like all components of the aircraft it is DC grounded.

Below is a picture of the radio control panel:

Below is a photo of the transceiver:

And finally an image from the maintenance manual depicting the antenna:

Regards

Stephen G7DIE

Aeronautical Mobile

Part of my work involves being posted overseas during the WInter on work detachments, and as part of my current detachment I have to fly from Gran Canaria to either Sweden or Finland every fourth day. Aeronautical mobile is currently forbidden in the UK, along with Italy, however the rest of EU allows /AM. If I apply CEPT temporary recommendation TR61-01 whilst operating from a foreign country I am bound by the rules and limitations of that particular country. Each country retains sovereignty for it's own airspace and therefore that countries rules apply, so as long as I'm not in UK airspace, and follow TR61-01 recommendations, I can operate aeronautical mobile in the airspace of a country that allows such.

Still with me? good.

So yesterday I had to fly to Oulou in Finland, some 6hrs 10min flight time, the captain had no problem with me operating /AM so I decided to put out a call. During the outbound and inbound sector I operated on 15, 17, and 20m and made 167 contacts with the following country prefixes:

VK, ZL, JA, YB, CT, DL, F, EA, SP, PA, OE, OK, OH, OM, SM, LA, 9A, I, SV, D, GI, GM, GW, ZD8, V21, J69, V44, 8P6, W1, W2, W3, W4, W5, W8, W9, VE1, VE2, VE3, VE5, RA, UY, YO, YL.

I'll be flying again on Friday morning, please listen out for operating /AM

Stephen G7DIE

Portable location Gran Canaria

I guess I should have posted this some time ago, however with work commitments I've been very busy until recently, this has curtailed my ambition to be on air as often as possible, however that situation has now been rectified so here's the latest update.

My location is on the South East coast, just North from Playa Del Ingles and approximately 40km South from the capital Las Palmas, below is a simple map of the location:

The equipment is simple, an Icom 703 with a small amplifier and a Buddipole antenna, using the antenna in different locations and different configurations can be a bit of a bind, however the various locations around the Island are a must to operate portable, so I just accept the inconvenience of building and dismantling the antenna so often. This brings with it another problem, wear and tear, whilst not fragile, the antenna elements don't take kindly to rough handling and have had to be repaired a number of times, so much so that I will be replacing the telescopic whips when I get home and figuring a more robust way of attaching the various jumper wire and coax connector, maybe even adding a SO239 socket to the antenna centre. Here's a pic of the antenna overlooking the sea from a cliff location:

It beats working in the UK that's for sure.

73

Stephen EA8/G7DIE