A photo montage of our U.K trip........................

This was for sure a trip of a life time and one way to keep the memory alive is through pictures. I am very fortunate to have a wife who is a photographer. (she thinks she isn't but she is). She was snapping what seemed to be all the time.....I'm sure she was as her total shots for the whole trip were 6,300. Below are some highlights of our trip courtesy of Julies fantastic camera abilities.

Our first big stop was London for 3 days
(Click images for full size)

Parliament building

Big Ben at twilight

Buckingham Palace

Time for refreshments

London Eye

London Bridge

Tubing anyone

View from the London Eye

Time to move on to Scotland then back to England with Yorkminster

Greeted by a gale force storm

Arrochar-Loch Long our home base

View from Seil island

Hieland Coo's translation Highland Cows

Stirling Castle

Chapel room-Yorkminster and  the ruins of Lindisfarne priory

14th century tea room were we stopped for tea

Oxford students finish exams

Blenheim palace

Monastery of Lindisfarne on Holy Island

Back home in Canada.........

It was a fantastic trip but as most will agree it is always nice to get back home and get into your own bed again. The weather was sunny for a total of 3 days but that's fine as Julie and planned for that. The castles, Big Ben, Loch's in Scotland, century old homes and  towns, London's tube, the amazing gardens I could go on and on......in a nut shell we had a great time. As I prepared for the trip I had big plans of getting lots of on air time with my KX1. With all the traveling during the day by the time evening rolled around it was time to chill and veg.....I will say when I was in the larger towns and city's in England I did have at times bad QRN. I have read on other blogs and email lists of devices that are plugged into the A.C that cause major QRN to hams. Also there are lots of plasma TV's out there as well. So if you lump all that together along with the sun giving us troubles now and again plus not having the push button filtering of the K3 the odds were not in my favor. I now have a lot more respect for my home setup and the QRN I was upset about in the past is nothing compared to the mess some hams have to put up with in Europe. Having said that here is the log of the contacts that I did have.



May 26      From Loch Long in Scotland    
OH7QR     RST 579 CW 14.058 @ 16:50 UTC  with 2 watts.
LA50         RST 569 CW  7.0008 @ 22:05 UTC with 2 watts.

May 28      From Yarm in England (This was during the CQ WPX CW contest)
All contact are between 19:40- 20:28 UTC
S50R     9A1A     9A6XX     DL2AA     DR9A     OL9Z     SK3W     DL8QS     SP9LJD     IT9T
There were more calls but these were the ones I was able to confirm others may had been copied wrong or I was not 100% sure it was a complete contact. In all there were 16 contacts but the above are the confirmed ones. 

This was the extent of my operations I did get on now and then but was unable to make any contacts or due to local QRN from what ever I was not able to copy anyone or anything. The antenna I used was the Miracle Whip antenna. I did make up some retractable long wire antennas  but did not have the room to use them. The KX1 was powered from the internal batteries giving me about 2 watts. The Mini Palm paddle worked just great with the rig.I found it to be very smooth and made me sound like a seasoned CW op.  In the coming days I will post some pictures of our trip. Now I want to concentrate on getting my new Alpha Delta DX-EE antenna in the attic and comparing it to the mobile whip antennas up there now. I plan to do the setup on Friday and hope to finish so I can get on the air on Saturday.  More blogging about that in the very near future.

News from Scotland....Loch Long

Loch Long 

Just an update from Scotland was able to make just one contact so far, not due from bad conditions but rather good conditions in Scotland with touring around, in the pub late and getting into the room and just wanting to get to bed to rest for another busy day. In the picture above is Loch Long and we are staying at the Inn on the far right. The view across the loch is fantastic and this Loch is a salt water Loch so you have the opportunity of seeing the tide come in and out.
As for contacts on May 27 I made as I said one contact from my room here at Loch Long, it was OH7QR. Erkki had a 599 signal and I was given a 579. I am very happy with that since it was the KX1 at 2 watts at the window of my second floor of my room. Well it's off to breakfast now and I hope a little more operating time on the rig as this is our last night at this location.
Bye for now.

Operations from the U.K.......

On May 19th I gave the KX1 a go from Yarm in England from 1800 UTC to 1900 UTC. I tried calling CQ both on 20 and 40 meters but was shut out. While on the weekend we took an amazing trip down to London I did bring the KX1 along with good intentions. Turns out we walked and walked and tubed (subway) the city all day and into the late evening. By the time I made it back to our room it was all I could do to get into the bathtub and sooth my muscles.  On Monday we are off to Scotland for a week and the mighty KX1 will be in tow. I will say that this week the evenings will be more free time and looks good for some operating time. In short our trip to London was out of this world we got excellent weather and were able to see all that we wanted to. Also we made it to as many local pubs to test all the local drafts. Well it's time for bed now just got back to Yarm and have to pack and hit the sack for our trip to Scotland.

We have landed in the UK.

Wednesday was landing getting up to Yarm from Newcastle, going out for dinner dinner (Had my first pint of English beer) now just recovering from the jet lag. There will be no radio this evening but I do hope to get the Palm Paddle humming Thursday night. The weather is great here we left Toronto with rain, wind and a temp of around 6C. Much better weather here in Yarm looking forward to Thursday taking this day to get our feet on the ground and do some planning for our train trip to London on Friday were we will be spending 3 days.