Winter Ham Radio Activities

The winter season makes ham radio portable ops difficult; it's cold, windy, and we get quite a bit of rain in my part of the UK. If everything lines up and it's relatively warm, the wind is calm, and the rain is holding off, it is fine weather for activating in the field. However, these conditions also need to line up with life. I have a full time job, wife and two kids, and attend online university taking two courses at once. I'm lucky to get a day out in nice weather.

This is where activating from the car pays off. It shields me from the elements, however after an hour or so, the cold seeps in. I have 40m, 20m, and 17m ham sticks and a mag mount for the top of the car. Not to mention the mobile 2m/70cm radio. This seems to do well enough for the most part and with 50 watts, it doesn't make things too difficult. 

The ham sticks are tuned to the low end of the bands as I'm primarily a CW operator. In the voice portion of the bands, even on the low side, the SWR reaches 2:1. No worries there but up higher in the bands and they're not so good. Luckily, I can set up the M1ECC SlideWinder DX outside the car and be able to have more bands and more flexibility, it just takes much longer to set up.

I expect that most of my activating will be from the car. This is quite unfortunate because I do like being outside to activate, it just feels more special. The important thing I must remember is that it's about getting to a park, castle, etc and activating, not setting up in the prettiest place with the most efficient antenna.

Getting on with it, WWFF in the UK is doing the Brass Monkey Awards again. This award is put out as an incentive to get activators out in December, January, and February. An activator must activate at least two references each month and each of those references must be different. Last year I participated and earned the award which was a difficult accomplishment. ECA is also doing some winter ideas of their own.

There's an additional incentive with ECA as well. They're issuing awards with 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 references during the December, January, and February months. With the ECA Winter Awards, the references don't have to be unique and they count towards the normal award categories of 5, 15, 20, 75, 100, 150, and 200 activations. So earning the Winter Awards gets the activators closer to the normal categories.

So far, I have one WWFF reference and three ECA references. December is coming to a close, but I do have some time off from work and a break in my courses. I hope to hear you on the air for the Brass Monkey Award and English Castles Winter Awards.

de M0NZZ

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