GB2TD – Trwyn Du
On the third weekend of August every year, Dragon ARC take place in one of the largest international operating events, and 2024 was no exception. Once again, we gathered at the Penmon Coastguard station, overlooking Trwyn Du (Black Point) Lighthouse to operate the special event callsign GB2TD as part of the International Lighthouses and Lightships (ILLW) weekend. This is a very popular event with 400 lighthouses and lightships being activated by amateurs around the world and thousands of other amateurs hoping to contact the special stations from their own homes!
Early evening on Friday 16th August a small gang of members gathered at the coastguard station to set up a simple wire antenna and HF transceiver in readiness for the weekend. This was a straightforward procedure, with the only sense of jeopardy was when Simon MW0NWM climbed onto the roof of the coastguard station to tie off one end of the wire aerial!
The first contact of the weekend was made at 06:45 on Saturday morning and members were kept busy throughout the day contacting amateurs across the UK, Europe and into north America, unfortunately the Australians eluded us! We did however speak to several other lighthouse stations and had many enjoyable contacts with interesting people.
We were visited by friend of Dragon ARC, David Victor Mills who brought along a trio of impressive valves to show us, one of which was an absolute beast, measuring around 18 inches and used to ply its trade in the transmitter at Anglesey Radio.
Stewart GW0ETF joined us later in the afternoon and set up a second aerial and transceiver so he could make contacts using Morse Code. As most of us headed home for the evening, we left Stewart hard at work attempting to make contacts with his morse key. This was more challenging than it would have been earlier in the day as there had been an amber alert for a possible aurora, which are well known to negatively impact HF propagation conditions.
Sunday was a frustrating day as contacts were harder to come by compared to Saturday morning, due to the continued issues caused by the aurora, however our members continued to valiantly work against the odds and make as many contacts as possible! We finished making voice contacts around 15:00 and packed up, leaving Stewart to continue making morse code contacts until late evening.
So how did we get on?
We made 291 voice contacts and 286 morse code (CW) contacts, making a grand total of 577!
None of this could have happened without the hard work, humour and enthusiasm of the small team of members who took part, including Danny GW7BZR, Simon MW0NWM, Stewart GW0ETF, Ian GW0KRL, Martin 2W0NKS, Tony GW4WZS ?, Liz GW0ETU and Sylvia. Special thanks to John GW3GUX for arranging our accommodation at the coastguard station and particular thanks are owed to Emlyn and everyone at Penmon Coastguard for allowing us to use their fabulous premises.
We are looking forward to doing it all again in 2025!
Article by Simon Taylor MW0NWM
Views Today : 27
Who's Online : 1