Keylines

My only on-air activity recently has been an effort in the RSGB Autumn Series contests on 80m but I did enjoy that, having linked up with the Bristol Contest Group so that at least my score is helping out a local club, something I had missed since leaving Reading.

The ‘fun’ activity recently, though, was being interviewed by BBC Radio Somerset and BBC Points West (TV) with my 10year old granddaughter, as we report in this month’s News pages. I do hope that we were able to give a good impression of the hobby. Even if it doesn’t result in new recruits, at least we may have gone some way to showing that amateur radio isn’t all a bunch of oldies! The interviews were organised by the RSGB under the ‘Get on the air to care’ banner, an initiative that seems to have been pretty successful and is still going strong.

It’s great, of course, that so many newcomers have joined the hobby in recent months, giving them an interest during lockdown and beyond. I see, though, that OFCOM are disappointed at the take-up by women – just 9.9% of the total. I guess that UK amateur radio remains, largely, the preserve of white, middle class middle-aged (and beyond) men, which is a great pity. I know that the RSGB and others do their best to spread the word and try to bring in a more eclectic mix of enthusiasts but it does seem to be tough. Is it the clubs that are putting people off? Is it the folk that they hear on the air? Or is it simply that hobbies don’t appeal so much to other age groups, to ladies, to ethnic minorities?

DXpeditions?

International travel is still a lottery unfortunately. A number of DXpeditions scheduled for earlier this year promptly issued press releases to the effect that, as a result of lockdown, they would delay until autumn. That, of course, has proved illusory in most cases. The big international contests (CQ WW Phone at the end of October and CQ WW CW at the end of November) are going to feel quite different this year, with far fewer DX entities active, although some (HH and PJ4 are a couple of examples) are host to stations that can be operated remotely (usually from the USA).

It does seem that planning for DX trips will have to wait – just today I saw that one UK amateur, wanting to travel to the Caribbean for the Commonwealth Contest next March, has been sent a long list of ‘dos and don’ts’ regarding his travel and accommodation, enough to make him think twice.

On the other hand, I feel sure that amateurs who do live in the more remote parts of the world are appreciating the link that their hobby offers to the outside world. I personally find it frustrating because I have been a regular traveller for amateur radio purposes, so the current situation feels distinctly odd. But it’s strange times indeed when even a major airline such as QANTAS (Australia) isn’t operating international flights (other than for repatriation purposes) until at least next March. I guess we will just have to content ourselves with some SOTA or other domestic activity, which, indeed, can be just as much fun.

144MHz Contest Results

Finally, I must apologise to any of you who were expecting the 144MHz Contest Results in this issue, as we usually do. Colin G6MXL, has indeed prepared the results and sent them to me but space was at a premium and I wanted to run some of the feature articles that I have been sitting on. Rest assured, the Contest Results article will appear next month.