sd7b qrt due to lightening

For a bit anyway... should be past when IOTA contest starts. The antennas are all disconnected and on the ground.

 Recent strikes

Getting to FLAKSKAER EU138

As will probably get asked at some point.... photos taken enroute

The boat almost got caught by the ferry wires!

Means if it sinks you drown or something like that :-)

Mines the white Hertz thing AU18029

Last driveable island.

The car ferry.

Turning for the army base where the quay is. Note the large coils of wire they are burying all the overhead power lines on this island at the moment.

It is safe honest!

The qrp DXpedition pile. LArge flat box is the solar panel brought from UK. The Yagi is for 6m, have a 2el quad from M1BXF too.

The 'support' pile.

Boat trip across to the island

Note the no U boat parking sign!

Destination...

SD7B Clublog uploads

Just done first test upload...

SD7B IOTA EU138 Photos

Random photos so far..

The DX station....
Large blue box thing is a 60AH battery running the station
The black box sitting on a bed is 13.8V stablised supply off the power feed

Solar panels

Almost disaster as left laptop on bench today

This sat there on the bench for 6 hours and was never touched!

It has all the logs on from time I've been in Sweden AND it has win-test and all the setup for the RSGB IOTA contest this weekend so loosing this would have been a nightmare.

I packed up the car after scouting locations and operating for a bit and no idea why but left it and a fleece on a bench.

It's an island in Sweden (only way on and off is by a car ferry and it's a long drive to this location too) so chances were it would have been there when I got back but was a heart stopping moment for a while until I had it in my hands again.

One item immediately taken off it and printed out and included here is the SD7B licence.

Needless to say, I've got a couple of backups of files already!

VE7FMN heatsink on KX3 #2334

Fred sent me one of these a while back but I didn't manage to fit it to KX3 before C5 trip (then XYL tidied the workshop and the package evaporated until last week when it was discovered again). Anyway just about to go to Sweden and will operate as SD7B from Flaskaer EU-138 and some operating outside the contest on 60m and 6m the later using Gavin M1BXF portable quad. The heatsink should operate fine and I'll have a second KX3 with me #1082 at the same time so will do some side by side comparisons.

Hope to manage QSO and will feed back findings here.

Take a look at http://www.ve7fmn.ca/ and http://www.ve7fmn.ca/this-is-cool/pdfs/performance_page/head-to-head.pdf

First ever 6m qso :-)

Just had first ever qso on 6m, borrowed Gavin M1BXF 6m quad which I'll take to Flakskaer in July (EU138). Anyway KX3 10W CW and qso with S57TW Bojan.

Just corrected Gavin's call... he is in UK now so M1BXF