Greetings everyone, well what a year…
Little did we realise that our last in person meeting would be in February 2020.
We had to cancel our May Day Bank holiday Rally and managed just one socially distanced Cox Tor field day in July. Peter (m1ayi) had his mast and antenna thoroughly inspected by a passing mini flock of sheep and Alan (g4bli) tested out his antenna for an up-coming CW contest.
We hoped that the Ultra Marathon and Abbots Way Walks would continue, but unfortunately not. In fact there were so many infringements of Dartmoor open spaces by fly campers that by September the National Park authorities banned all activities on the Moor.
So, the success story for communications this year have been our Zoom meetings. We have run these for 6 months on Thursday evenings at 1930 hrs. Most last for 40 minutes exactly, but now over the Christmas period, we have extra time (Thank you Zoom).
So here is a summary of some of our Zoom chats:- Alan (g4bli) is very active in building gear, mostly with vavles, and has built 2 Parasets. He made 108 contacts on the CW competition on Cox Tor in July. Alan also grabbed a few activation points on SOTA summit Brown Willy on Bodmin Moor. Peter (m1ayi) has sorted many pieces of equipment, Viv (g7awg) has tried to learn Morse code, no test yet! Gerry (g6ijw) had success with his Spectrum analyser, and installing a new bathroom suite. Terry (2e1hsl) worked out new antenna systems, dipoles, folded dipoles etc and told some sparkling jokes. Ted (g1hhd) has made great progress with FT8, 42 countries, 4 continents, including Antarctica. He has also been engaged in regular attempts to fight off the squirrel attacks on his bird feeders. Rob (m7aev) is currently studying for his Intermediate licence.
We all hope that we will be able to hold our Rally next year, date for your diary, Monday 3 May 2021 in Yelverton Memorial Hall.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS 2020 AND A GOOD NEW YEAR 2021
Dartmoor Radio Club 