Having got my Diamond X50 up and got the IC-705 out its bag it was time to get on the G4PRS 2M Net which happens weekly on Mondays from 20:00 on 145.450 (usually).
Due to C19 and risk of infection, I’ve not been to the club lately, so it was great to hear familiar voices again, albeit I do miss those who are not on the net.
The net control done an excellent job on starting on time and looking for contacts, of which there where plenty ! I managed to get in and enjoyed going around. I started taking signal reports and noting down others we progressed,
I am operating using 10W of power and default settings on the IC-705. My QTH / Maidenhead location is IO90BS.
| callsign | received | sent | |
| G4PRS | 5/8 | 5/2 | |
| G1TEX | 5/8 | ||
| M7PBT | 5/9+3 | ||
| M7BAQ | 5/9+2 | 5/9+1 | |
| 2E0EQD | 5/9+3 | ||
| /P | 5/8 | 4/9 | |
| 2E0JPD | 5/9 | ||
| 2E0DJW | 5/9 |
I was glad to ‘pull’ G1TEX out the ether and also G4PRS who is based near Hamworthy, there is a considerable hill between us. G4PRS was running 40 watts I believe, so maybe that helped ?
It will be interesting with my upcoming upgrade to the shack VHF/UHF to see if additional power helps, with 2M mostly being line of sight, how much of a performance increase can be had.
Apologies again for not getting all the call signs on last nights net and also the portable station, as whilst a good signal as I couldn’t quite write it down quick enough.
Looking forward to next weeks net to see if my ‘upgrade’ will help.