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 On the 4th of October members of the Middlesex DX Group made their first DXpedition to the Island of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland EU123.
The group rented a cottage and applied for the callsign GB2MDG, we also planned to use the club call MS0MDG/P for SOTA activation weather permitting.
The trip set off from West London at 2200 on Friday the 3rd of October, and we drove through the night to Ardrossan, where we were catching the ferry. Unfortunately the weather had taken a turn for the worse - we started the ferry crossing to Arran at 0700 in a force 8 gale, luckily we all had our sea legs on and no one turned too green hihi.
We arrived on Arran to find no improvement in the WX, heavy rain and wind. We could not take position of our base till 14.00 so we had a few hours to kill, thankfully due to a local pub the hours passed very quick.
On taking over the cottage the first job was to unload the minibus and set up the various stations, and then to erect a quick antenna for HF, 2m and 70cm. A couple of hours opperating and then get some needed sleep.
The next day was all hands on deck, we raised a 50 foot tower with the 6m, 70cm yagis and the HF wire on, and then a second smaller tower for the 2m yagis.
HF was a Carolina Windom and 350 watts, 6m a 5ele moonraker and 100watts, 70cm was two x 21 ele tonnas and 350 watts, 2m was two x 17 ele tonnas and 300 watts.
The radios and antennas were brought from the groups own shacks, and some loaned from other local hams to whom we are gratetful, so we had quite a good collection of equipment. We will be updating the web with a list of equipment and some photos soon.
We had hoped to operate from 80m to 70cm, but the terrain was not so good for VHF/UHF so we did not make too many contacts on the higher bands, but we did manage a few qsos via meteor scatter on the 2m and 6m bands using WSJT
The response on HF was very good, when the bands opened we had some long pile ups on 20m and 80m, and work some good DX which made the trip very worthwhile. Credit has to go to Jason M1PRO and Simon 2E0VAG the main HF operators who done a amazing job battling the pile ups,
In total we worked over 1600 stations and 69 countries which is not bad for a simple wire antenna.
It was somewhat dissapointing on the vhf bands, perhaps next time a better vhf location will have to be looked at, but the dissapointment was soon overcome by the response we had on HF.
We decided on Arran for the ease of organising the trip, it was no harder to plan than a family holiday and for a first attempt at a dxpedition it all went very well with no unforseen problems.
The bad weather did not allow for any SOTA activations maybe next time. All in all we,G0KLX, 2E0VAG, M1PRO, 2E1IDC, G1KAW, had a fantastic week, and can highly recommend for others to have a go at.
We are already talking about whats next ?.........................
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