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For more years than I can remember John GW3IGG had run Pembrokeshire RAYNET (PR) and as part of PR activities members have taken part in the International Lighthouse/Lightship weekend from St Ann’s Head on the headland over looking the entrance to Milford Have, unfortunately owing to illness John had to stand down as RAYNET controller earlier in the year, this meant that a new controller would have to take over the job of organizing the weekend.
This job feel to Alan GW3VEN and Ray GW3CR who on the Friday before the event went out to set up the antenna along with Peter GW4ZOU, on arrival at the lighthouse they found that the usual cottage that the group had used in the past was not available and we had to move to the end cottage this did however have some advantages as it put a greater distance between the antenna and the lighthouse radar.
They set up two HF stations in the kitchen and front room and put in the cable for a third station up stairs, they then had to put in extension power cables as the cottages were being rewired and there was only one working 13A socket.
The Saturday morning saw Alan and Ray arrive first followed shortly by Chris GW7HAE and his SSTV equipment Chris who is from Aberystwyth had come down the day before and was staying in Dale he soon had a 2m dipole up and started sending pictures by which time Ray and Alan were hard at work on the HF bands, and when Sid GW0UQH arrived he took over from Alan on the main HF set and for the rest of the day they rotated operations.
The Sunday saw the lighthouse open to the public and being the middle of August in Britain the weather was awful and blowing a gale and I do not know how they keep the bouncy castle tied down which was located next to the lighthouse, despite the weather hundreds of people milled about waiting for the lighthouse to open, However once the gates were open any chance of operating went out the window as we started getting a constant stream of visitors and the whole event turned into a public relations exercise for amateur radio, fortunately John GW0JRF was on hand to answer most of the questions and sell amateur Radio, it was also quite surprising to see so many old and new amateurs at one time it looked as if it was turning into a radio rally about midday Richard MW0XDT and his son Tom MW3TQM arrived and set up a VHF station out side the cottage in his camp van and started working stations. About 16:00 we started to pack up as it was obvious to us all that with the amount of visitors still streaming through the doors we would not work any more contacts that day, even Richard out side was having visitors despite the gale blowing round his van.
At the end of the weekend despite only working just over a 150 contacts all concerned had enjoyed a good weekend and we had demonstrated amateur radio to a lot of people not only that we were looking forward to next year and all the talk was on how we could improve things. |
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Ray GW3CR |
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Blowing a gale over St Ann’ s Head Lighthouse |
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