August 2021
I had only ever operated 70cms through repeaters and never useing simplex. Well I have now, I had an arranged sked with James-G7MLO who was holidaying in Cornwall. we had arrange to try a DMR call so armed with my MD380 and FT817 with a 3 ele Yagi I started to call on DMR. Sadly there was a setting wrong somewhere as James could see my signal but not decode. Switching to FM was succesful with signals of 5/8 & 5/9. Much to my surprise the MD380 even made the 45Km crossing using the standard rubber duck aerial. I never thought a 70cms handheld would cover such a distance so I will definitely by trying more on UHF.
June 2017
Operating from Portcreasa on the island of St Mary's Isles of Scilly. Weather was overcast and windy in the morning but cleared in the afternoon giving near cloud free blue sky's, temperature around 18-19C.
20m was alive with pleanty of inter G and continental stations coming in at 59+.
June 2018
Another dry and sunny day, little hazzy but warm with light breeze. Pleanty of stations coming in on all bands from 6 to 20m but propagation was not as good and it was difficult to make myself heard with only 5w. Managed some 59's inter G and 1 into Belgium.
15th June 2018
Today was very warm with high humidity so too hot to do much other than sit in the shade and tune around on the radio. Worked a few stations today on 10 & 20m running 2.5w from Buzza Tower, St Mary's. Canada stations were booming in at 5/9+.