LF convention pictures

The annual RSGB "HF" Convention took place at the Beaumont centre, Old Windsor, on the weekend of October 13/14 this year.

The LF events took place on the Saturday with the morning being spent in "the Orchid room" enjoying talks from G3NYK on LF propagation and G3LDO on the trans-Atlantic QSOs. Delegates then took part in the "LF forum" where the subject of a bandplan (or guide!) was discussed and the possiblity of an MF amateur allocation around 500kHz was announced. There were also the awards presentations.

The Nevada cup went to Alan, G3NYK for his great work studying LF propagation as it applies to amateurs. The special operator's award went to Mike G3XDV for his outstanding achievements on LF from a small suburban garden.

Peter Bobek awards were presented to G3AQC, G3LDO and M0BMU (also to be sent to VE3ZJ, VA3LK and VE1ZZ) for their trans-Atlantic successes. Awards were also presented for the furthest distance worked in the last year. The award for an outstanding contribution to LF operation went to Alberto, I2PHD and Vittorio, IK2CZL who wrote "Argo", the most popular spectral analysis program for QRSS work.

After lunch there was a sequence of short talks. Firstly G4JNT described his 700W half-bridge mosfet PA which needs no mains transformer and was inspired by the Decca design.

Next G3YSX enlightened us on the details of the LF "repeater" MB7LF in Crawley. This consists of an LF receiver connected to a VHF SSB transmitter enabling listeners up to 40 miles away to tune across the 136kHz band with their 2m receiver! This was invaluable for the LF station on site, MB2HFC, as the local noise is terrible. Listening via MB7LF however, they worked quite a few stations including EI0CF and PA0SE.

N4ICK then talked about the Amrad e-field antenna, which recently featured in QST. This is capable of very good performance as proven by G3GRO who has had one on test. In fact MB7LF will be using it soon.

Orchid room