RotA 2019

Location

The Somerset and Dorset Railway Heritage Trust are based at the former Midsomer Norton South Railway Station. The postal address is Midsomer Norton Station, Silver Street, Midsomer Norton, BA3 2EY. However, there are some specific details that will be of interest to radio hams:

Lat/Long: 51.281077°,-2.482759°
IARU: IO81sg
IOTA: EU005 (UK Mainland)
WAB: ST65 – England

Stepping back in time

Equipment Used

We’ve been undertaking our Special Events for a number of years now and have gradually fine tuned our equipment and setup over time. Railways on the Air is one of our favourite events and the only one where we regularly operate both SSB and Data. In the future our data might have to be FT8 in place of our preferred PSK as the number of PSK operators appears to have diminished since the advent of FT8, time will tell if this switch is permanent or not.

This year we used:

SSB Station:

Nissei DPS300GL power supply;
Yaesu FT991 HF/6m/2m/70cm multi-mode transceiver;
MFJ 993 auto atu;
80m doublet fed with 450Ω ladder line;
Behringer Xeynx 302 USB mixer/splitter;
Logitech powered external speakers; and
Acer Aspire 8942 laptop running CQRLog under Ubuntu MATE 18.04LTS.

Data Station:

Watson PowerMite NF power supply;
Yaesu FT857D HF/6m/2m/70cm multi-mode transceiver;
LDG Z11 Pro auto atu;
Multi-band (40m, 30m, 20m, 15m) delta loop antenna;
Tigertronics Signalink USB data interface; and
Toshiba Satellite C660D-19X laptop running FLDigi under XUbuntu 18.04LTS.

SSB station Data station

The Operation

This year’s event was rather sparsely attended, in fact jokingly it became known as the “Andy and Mark roadshow” although others were in attendance, notably Ken M7MYU on Sunday.

Saturday didn’t include any digi operations, this was for two reasons:

Firstly we were missing a non-critical cable from the digi-modes station, we could have operated but would have lacked the CAT interface that allows frequency information to be logged automatically; and
More importantly we were going to lose one operator on the Saturday due to other commitments so data had to take a back seat on Saturday.

This wasn’t too much of a handicap, and allowed some operation on 20m by the SSB station resulting in our best DX into Carlise Pennsylvania when we worked W3SOX for a distance of around 5,600km, not bad going for 100W into an 80m doubet although having looked at Davids QRZ page his station was probably doing a lot of the work!

Antennas

On the Sunday we had both stations on air and operations were more normal for this event.

Mark M0SKV operating with Ken M7MYU logging

We had a good operation over the weekend as a whole managing over 100 contacts, although only 12 of these contacts were with other Railways on the Air registered stations.

Restored rolling stock

The Log

Date (UTC)	Time (UTC)	Station Worked	Band or Frequency	Mode	RST		Operators Name	QTH	Gridsquare	Notes
Date (UTC)	Time (UTC)	Station Worked	Band or Frequency	Mode	Sent	Rec'd	Operators Name	QTH	Gridsquare	Notes
21/09/19	10:57	GB4OST	80m	SSB	59	59	Steve	Old Station Tintern		Newport Amateur Radio Society
21/09/19	11:04	GB0SCR	80m	SSB	59	59	Colin	Swindon Cricklade Railway		Colin G4GBP
21/09/19	11:08	GB2LHR	80m	SSB	57	59	Tom	LAKESIDE & HAVERTHWAITE RAILWAY		Furness Amateur Radio Society
21/09/19	11:11	GB0CVR	80m	SSB	59	59	John	Colne Valley Railway		Braintree and District Amateur Radio Society
21/09/19	11:16	G8QZ	80m	SSB	57	59	David	Derby
21/09/19	11:19	G3NYY	80m	SSB	59	59	Walt	Tewkesbury
21/09/19	11:25	G3OBX	80m	SSB	59	59	Derek	Romford
21/09/19	11:31	GW0WPO/P	80m	SSB	55	59	Neil	Llangollen Canal
21/09/19	11:36	M0TCD	80m	SSB	59	59	Adrian	West Sussex
21/09/19	11:40	G4UAQ	80m	SSB	59	59	Ian	Maidstone
21/09/19	11:45	M1AQO	80m	SSB	59	59	Glen	Warrington
21/09/19	11:46	M0LZY	80m	SSB	59	59	Paul	New Forest National Park
21/09/19	11:49	G0FGI	80m	SSB	56	59	Tom	North Devon
21/09/19	11:52	G4ACS	80m	SSB	59	59	Geoff	Kinver
21/09/19	11:56	G8YPL	80m	SSB	59	59	Keith	Liverpool
21/09/19	12:00	G4CVU	80m	SSB	55	59		Wall Heath Kingswinford
21/09/19	12:02	M0XLT	80m	SSB	43	59	Kevin	Skipton
21/09/19	12:11	PH75MG	40m	SSB	59	59	Michael	Culemborg
21/09/19	12:27	W3SOX	20m	SSB	55	58	David	Carlise PA USA
21/09/19	12:45	GB0WHH	80m	SSB	59	59	Thomas	Welsh Highland Heritage Railway		Porthmadog & District Amateur Radio Society
21/09/19	12:56	GB4VBR	80m	SSB	59	59	Owen	Berkeley Vale Railway		Thornbury and South Gloucestershire ARC
21/09/19	12:58	M0OYH	80m	SSB	58	58	Craig	Liverpool
21/09/19	13:04	GW3RVG	80m	SSB	57	59
21/09/19	13:05	G3OKA	80m	SSB	58	58	John	Wirral
21/09/19	13:34	GB2RDR	40m	SSB	56	59	Goerge	Royal Deeside Railway		Aberdeen Amateur Radio Society
21/09/19	13:49	MD/OP2D	40m	SSB	59	59
21/09/19	13:53	GB4OKE	80m	SSB	57	57	Jim	DARTMOOR RAILWAY		HOLSWORTHY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB
21/09/19	14:10	GB2VK	80m	SSB	59	59	Danny	Caernarfon
21/09/19	14:56	M0UTC	80m	SSB	59	59	Paul	Malvern
21/09/19	14:59	G4NXL	80m	SSB	59	59	Malc
21/09/19	15:01	G0JNT	80m	SSB	59	59	Les	Grimsby
21/09/19	15:02	F4VPL	80m	SSB	59	59	Dave	Brittany
21/09/19	15:05	G0RMU	80m	SSB	59	59	Roger	Woking
21/09/19	15:06	M0RBM	80m	SSB	59	59	Rodney	Bude
22/09/19	09:19	GB2SDR	80m	SSB	59	59	John	South Devon Railway		Torbay Amateur Radio Society
22/09/19	10:07	GW0WTH	80m	SSB	59	59	Hugh
22/09/19	10:12	GB0GCR	80m	SSB	59	59	Stephen	Great Central Railway (Nottingham)		Nunsfield House Amateur Radio Group
22/09/19	10:12	G4FOG	80m	SSB	59	58	Colin
22/09/19	10:16	GB4MHR	80m	SSB	57	59	Chris	Mid-Hants Railway (The Watercress Line)		Horndean & District ARC
22/09/19	10:20	M0RLO	80m	SSB	56	59	Dennis	Hitchin
22/09/19	10:24	M0KEP	80m	SSB	59	59	Tim	Abingdon
22/09/19	10:28	G4TXF	80m	SSB	59	59	Colin
22/09/19	10:32	G3VHH	80m	SSB	59	59	John	Langley
22/09/19	10:36	DL3APY	14.0714	PSK31	599	599	Matthias	Berlstedt	JO51ob
22/09/19	10:39	GW6EWX	80m	SSB	46	59	Nick	Bala Wales
22/09/19	10:49	G4POF	80m	SSB	59	59	John	Hampshire
22/09/19	10:52	G3IOI	80m	SSB	59	59	Ray	Bristol
22/09/19	10:58	G3TPP	80m	SSB	59	59	Barry
22/09/19	11:03	G8OFA	80m	SSB	59	59	Martin
22/09/19	11:03	EA2DDO	14.0717	PSK31	599	599	Aritz	Legazpi	IN83
22/09/19	11:06	G4VHL	80m	SSB	59	59	Tim	Devon
22/09/19	11:13	G3KIP	80m	SSB	59	59	Ken	Tunbridge
22/09/19	11:17	M0NMI	80m	SSB	59	59	David	Swindon
22/09/19	11:24	M5AKY	80m	SSB	59	59	Donald	Farrington
22/09/19	11:27	G4AQY	80m	SSB	59	59	David
22/09/19	11:34	IZ8IZK	14.0719	PSK31	599	599	Carmine	Grimaldi	JM89cd
22/09/19	11:38	G7OPD	80m	SSB	59	59	Paul	Great Barr Birmingham
22/09/19	11:46	GB2MOP	80m	SSB	59	59
22/09/19	11:49	GW4OFQ	80m	SSB	59	59	Roger	Ammanford
22/09/19	11:52	G3XBN	80m	SSB	59	59
22/09/19	11:56	DJ0WO	14.0708	PSK31	599	599	Wolf	Munich	JN57rx
22/09/19	11:58	GB0CVR	80m	SSB	59	59	Geoff	Colne Valley Railway		Braintree and District Amateur Radio Society
22/09/19	12:27	DD9ZZ	14.0716	PSK31	599	599	Horst	Limburg	JO40ai
22/09/19	12:36	M0IRB	40m	SSB	59	59	Sam	North Yorkshire
22/09/19	12:41	F4VPL	40m	SSB	59	59	Dave	Brittany
22/09/19	12:42	M0WRI	40m	SSB	59	59	Peter	Durham
22/09/19	12:49	GW6STK	40m	SSB	59	59	Robert
22/09/19	12:53	G0MMN	40m	SSB	59	59	Ben
22/09/19	12:56	M0PER	40m	SSB	59	59	Alan	Chester
22/09/19	12:58	F5GPE/P	14.0715	PSK31	599	599	Pierre	St Martin de Clelles	JN24tu
22/09/19	13:03	G0RRZ	40m	SSB	59	59	Richard	Nottinghamshire
22/09/19	13:07	G4IWO	40m	SSB	59	59	Nick	Yorkshire
22/09/19	13:09	M0HOY	40m	SSB	59	59	Stephen	Leigh
22/09/19	13:10	M6KQK	40m	SSB	59	59	Paul	Leeds
22/09/19	13:12	M3COY	40m	SSB	59	59	Mike	Manchester
22/09/19	13:14	M3MAY	40m	SSB	59	59	Matty	Wakefield
22/09/19	13:18	M6IHM	40m	SSB	59	59	Tony	Sheffield
22/09/19	13:19	G0PSM	40m	SSB	59	59	Peter	Manchester
22/09/19	13:20	IK3RIP	14.0719	PSK31	599	599	Angelo	Venice
22/09/19	13:22	M0BZZ	40m	SSB	59	59	Bob	Birkenhead
22/09/19	13:26	2E0NMK/M	40m	SSB	59	59	Simon	Coxhoe
22/09/19	13:29	G4GTX	40m	SSB	59	59	Stuart	Sunderland
22/09/19	13:32	G8XOU	40m	SSB	59	59	Ivan	Norfolk
22/09/19	13:39	GD0BFN	40m	SSB	59	59	John	Isle of Man
22/09/19	13:46	MM0KBT	40m	SSB	59	59	Davy	Scotland
22/09/19	13:53	M0TZR	40m	SSB	59	59	Paul	County Durham
22/09/19	13:54	F4EQE	14.0718	PSK31	599	599	Serguei	Strasbourg	JN38uo
22/09/19	13:58	2E0TGK	40m	SSB	59	59		Pendennis Cornwall
22/09/19	13:58	LZ3QE	14.0712	PSK31	599	599		Burgas	KN32ql
22/09/19	14:02	MM0AOQ	40m	SSB	59	59	Colin	Scotland
22/09/19	14:03	G3TGB	40m	SSB	59	59	Brian	Braintree
22/09/19	14:10	2M0RHT	40m	SSB	45	57	Ralph	Scotland
22/09/19	14:13	F4VSU	40m	SSB	59	59	David	Le Pont Gourge
22/09/19	14:18	GM4EIW	40m	SSB	59	59	John	Scotland
22/09/19	14:19	ER1PB	14.0714	PSK31	599	599	Serghei	Chisinau	KN47ja
22/09/19	14:20	GM4MTI	40m	SSB	59	59	Donald	Scotland
22/09/19	14:22	M0HEM	40m	SSB	59	59	John	Essex
22/09/19	14:26	2M0SWA	40m	SSB	59	59	Stuart	Scotland
22/09/19	14:29	G0JHK	40m	SSB	59	59	Mike	Hastings East Sussex
22/09/19	14:33	2M0BHR	40m	SSB	59	59	Peter	Scotland
22/09/19	14:35	PA3JD	40m	SSB	59	59	Joop	Netherlands
22/09/19	14:39	DF9TW	14.0707	PSK31	599	599	Tom	Pirmasens	JN39tf
22/09/19	14:40	M0ABT	40m	SSB	59	59	Stuart	East Sussex
22/09/19	14:41	PA3ECZ	40m	SSB	59	59	Ruud	Netherlands
22/09/19	14:44	GB6RHD	40m	SSB	56	59	Malcolm	Dungerness
22/09/19	14:49	F/PA3TOP	40m	SSB	59	59