TARG- 2 Tree Island Field Day Report

Yesterday I spent the day with my newest club Thames Amateur Radio Group (TARG) at their field day event located down Two Tree Island in Leigh on Sea. The idea was to see how well the saltwater helped propagation, as you will see, turns out pretty well! (read to the bottom to see where I worked!!)

I arrived at 9:05am ahead of the tide to set up on the waters edge and lay out radials into the salt marsh which would become flooded as the tide came in around 2pm.

As you can see the location is pretty good for beaming East, and as you will find out works well West too!!

I set up the Antenna as close to the edge as a dare and ran some odd lengths of wire out into the salt marsh with the ends in one of the small channels to ensure it was “wet”.

As you can see the car park allows you to park right on the edge of the sea water channels.

The TARG guys and girls had set up a wonderful little portable station, including BBQ for the Sausage and Bacon rolls!

The sun was already very hot and knowing the sea breeze would cool you off without realising you were getting burnt I unpacked and set up the sun tent, I purchased this recently off fleabay so wasn’t sure how good it would be, it wasn’t expensive. But turned out to be perfect for operating in the field and will certainly be taking this again! 3 poles, 4 pegs and thats it… Simples.

Time to set up the antenna.

My trusty 10m single flag pole, inverted V set up using a shop bought Half Size G5RV.

I do not put the centre all the way up the pole otherwise the angle will be too small between the legs, been told the flatter the better.

Anyway, soon going to be replacing the elements on this with new Sotabeam antenna cable so will probably convert it to a full size G5RV…

But for now we work with what we have!

Time to fire up the 20m band and see if anyone is there…

WHOOO, the bands are full. I forgot the World Wide contest was on. Oh well if you cant beat them join them.

Spent the next hour saying M6ONH – 59 27. Next….

But still filled up the log sheet in about 45 mins.

The challenge as a new ham is picking out the callsigns whilst writting them down and also thinking about your reply, which doesn’t always get through first time.

Anyway, I scribbled them all down on my sheet as best I could and moved on to the next…

A few other people had a go on my radio, which I’m always more than happy to let people (licenced) to do. Everyone is always so helpful, its only fair I also play that same friendly sharing game.

Les, was first up and had a few contacts on 20m. Think he would of been happier if I had a keyer so he could of played CW and not SSB.

Then Dave, M1ECC was up. By now it was about 3pm, the tide was turning and the TARG group where packing up. The contest was over and all seems quiet on the 20m front.

But Dave managed to make some great QSO’s with France and Capri Island off the coast of Italy.

We packed up and left around 4:30pm…

———————-

Back to the 20m QSO’s I had…

As I mentioned, I wasn’t really paying attention to the stations I was working, was just trying to get as many as I could…

When I got home I started to write the paper log into my QTH computer logging software(LOG4OM), which tells me about the station if they are registered on QRZ.COM

There were a few surprises!!!

First one of note. The United Nations HQ Special Event Callsign 4U1A, USA!!

Second was Asiatic Russia U87M Another good hop!

But the Third one surprised me the most!!! Venezuela! That’s my first QSO with South America!

WOW!

Can’t wait for another field day soon! I really enjoy working portable.

In fact I may even be organising the next field day for CARS, so watch this space!