The UK Activity Contests are held by the RSGB Contest Committee (www.rsgbcc.org) throughout the month on Tuesdays from 20h00-22h30 local time. First Tuesday of the month is 144MHz, second is 432MHz, third is 1.3GHz and the fourth Tuesday is 50MHz and 13cm to 3cm.

I’ve always been interested in 6m, but have never done much about it. I bought a Yaesu FT690 a while ago with a whip antenna (Moonraker MR625) and PL259 magnetic mount for the car. On the evening of the 22nd on the spur of the moment I decided to drive out the Newlands Corner just outside Guildford and listen on 6m. This is at location IO91RF95.

This wasn’t planned so ‘logging’ involved making a partial list of the callsigns heard and locations where given. Hopefully things will improve in future!

As this is the most stations I’ve ever heard on 6m there was opportunity to note one or two interesting phenomena. There was very fast flutter on some signals from home and portable stations. There was also slow QSB from others. Not sure what the causes were – lots to learn.

See videos below for some snap, crackle and pop action.

Partial list of stations heard:
G7IRQ/P
M0MDY
G8BCG
M0ICR
G0VQR
G4GFI
2E0LDZ/P  –  IO91MP
G4ELJ – IO91MP
G8XVJ/P – IO93AD
G1DFL
G1KAW  –  IO91RH
G0VQR  –  IO91NK
G8LZE
G4DFQG3PHO

Also received beacons I’ve heard before:
GB3BAA in Aylesbury (IO91PS). Roughly 66km.
GB3RAL in Harwell (IO91IN). Roughly 67km.

This was fun. It is nice to be a bit more active. If time allows I plan to have a go at this contest in future. It will be interesting to see what 2.5W from my 690 into the whip will do. There were several strong stations, so I expect to make some contacts.