GBØBWS (GB zero Bishop's Waltham
Scouts) is a special events Amateur Radio
station put together to celebrate the Annual Worldwide "Jamboree On The
Air" (JOTA), where some 500,000 Scouts from all over the world communicate
via Amateur Radio.
You can EMAIL us for
a sked or to send us other info on
andy_digby at hotmail dot com
as this will be monitored throughout JOTA.
We are: 1st Bishop's Waltham Scout Troop (The Gunners)
We meet:
8pm on Friday nights during term time at the
The Scout Hut, Bishop's
Waltham, Hampshire (click here for a map of roughly where we are).
Our
locators are :
50° 57' 6" N
1° 12' 7" W
IO
9Ø jw
SU 56 11 73
Our Amateur
Radio Station Equipment:
HF (3.5 - 30 MHz SSB): An FT 897 running between 5
and 80 watts into a VL-1000 linear amplifier, which is feeding a Palstar AT1500C
antenna tuning unit which in turn is feeding a 450-ohm open ladder line fed
doublet antenna mounted off the end of our HQ building, in "inverted vee"
configuration, the middle of which is about 23m (75 feet) above ground level.
Our site here is about 36m (118 feet) above mean sea level. We also have a G5RV
as our reserve aerial (or for use with PSK 31) and a dedicated 80m dipole.
4m VHF FM: A Philips FM1000 (FM only) running
about 35 watts into a vertical, also mounted as high as we can get it above the
HQ. This will be used in much the same way as 2m, for local chat with other
Scout Groups in the area.
2m VHF + 70cm UHF FM: An IC-2725e (FM only)
running about 50 watts on VHF and 35 watts on UHF into a Comet GP-15 multi-band
vertical mounted as high as we can get it above our HQ. This aerial is also
capable of 6m operation, but we have no plans for 6m this year.
Our Modes of Operation:
As we're Scouts, we intend to pass Greeting Messages to
other Scouts world wide, so our main mode of operation will be voice, on single
sideband (SSB) HF, but we also intend to get some FM going locally as outlined
above.
If we are REALLY lucky, there
might be be some morse code going on as well !
We plan to work all the
main SSB Scout Frequencies across the HF bands, and 4m, 2m and 70cm FM, all
depending on band conditions, so you should be able to find us fairly easily on
one of the following (usually ± 10 kHz), bearing in mind that SOME
of the HF Scout frequencies have been changed this year to ensure Scouts can
operate in a WAG (Worked All Germany) contest-free segment of the band. We are
likely to be found on the HIGHER bands during the daytime (with 17m
probably being the highest we shall use, due to prevailing radio conditions this
year) and LOWER bands during the evenings (i.e. 40m or 80m).
80m (3.690 MHz)
40m (7.090 & 7.190 MHz)
20m (14.290 MHz)
17m
(18.140 MHz)
15m (21.360 MHz)
12m (24.960 MHz)
10m (28.390 MHz)
4m FM (Make contact on 70.450 MHz initially, then QSY to another FM
frequency such as 70.4250 MHz)
2m FM (Make contact on 145.500 MHz
initially then QSY to another FM frequency such as 145.400 MHz)
70cm
FM (Make contact on 433.500 MHz then QSY to another FM frequency such as
434.325 MHz)
As an experiment this year, we will also try to run an
Echolink station over the internet. Please look for "JOTA Station : GBØBWS"
in the 'Location' field in the listings as the Echolink node will be licenced to
GØJLX.
For more pictures of GBØBWS over the JOTA weekend, click on this link !
There WILL be a 100% QSL for all contacts throughout the weekend - so please QSL via the bureau. In the meantime, you are welcome to EMAIL us - and we will do our best to monitor this throughout the weekend on a laptop.
Pages late updated 3rd October 2008