The club attended Shedfest 2026 at Sandown airport on 13/14 June.

We arrived early on the Friday to set up and managed to secured a corner pitch so we could keep M9OPD’s van on site and attach a 10M DX Commander mast to the roof.

A gazebo was erected with chairs and a table inside incase of inclement weather but there was no need to worry as the sun shone for both days.

The working conditions were a Yaesu FT-710 working from a 100A lithium phosphate battery. The antenna was a 66ft long wire in an inverted ‘L’ configuration starting at 10M and sloping down slightly to 6M at the far end. The endfed ‘random wire’ went into a Yaesu FC-40 remote tuner and would happily tune most band but would not tune on 40M so a vintage manual tuner was used for 40M. Events like these are not just about making contacts they are also about gaining knowledge and experience from fellow members and as soon as Trevor (M0TVR) arrived and was told of the situation he said make the wire 71ft and it should work on 40M. With a bit of ‘field day engineering’ we grafted an extra 5ft of wire to the antenna and sure enough the remote tuner would now match the antenna to about 1.5:1.

The event was well supported by club members with 12 visiting on Saturday and 8 on Sunday.

Various other island radio enthusiast popped in to have a chat and on Saturday morning the first visitor was the local RSGB rep Fred Dawson (G1HCM) who stayed for a while and chatted with member of the public. Several CB enthusiast also visited our stand.

In all we made 90 contacts over the weekend but the event was not about the number of contact it was more a social event and demonstration of what the club could offer and in that respect I believe it was a great success

Once again it was a busy night in the shack. The QO100 transciever built by Roger, G8NHG and firtled by Mark G4DOT was installed ready for the clubs first transmission to the QO100 geostationary sattelite. After a few speedy updates and unplugging things and plugging them back in (its like turning it off and on again) and it sprang into life.  Silence decended over the crowd (it was very busy in the shack) after a shout to keep it down and Mark tentativley replied to a German station calling CQ. Victory and DO3FEH came through 5/9 and we had a brief chat (he was working portable) and received also a 5/9 report.

The club thanks Roger and Mark for their time and effort, particularly Roger for actually building it and making it look like its a manufactured product.

Trevor G4RFM brought in a straight CW key that he got cheaply from eBay that Rod G4ZUP wasted no time in testing and made several QSO with stations on both 30M and 20M including an Italian special event callsign. So that worked great too.

Chris G7IVF had also fixed the alignment issues with the screen so that the Open Ham clock all fits nicely and it a most useful tool.

It was a busy night in the shack with a lot going on.

Roger G8NHG and Mark G4DOT worked on the QO100 setup. The dish was replaced with a larger one and needed re aligning and moving and so Mark ventured up onto the roof (I didnt upload the picture of the ladder, elf and safety and all that)
so that the receive now works great and the transmission should be ready for next week.

Tom got on the radio following a new earth stake installation by Rod G4ZUP which stopped stray RF coming into the shack and only the tuner now needs to be relocated.

Is it straight?

Chris stares in wonderment

Roger G8NHG and Steve M0RQD paid a visit to a great bunch of guys over from Belgium who are on the IOW for 5 days to play radio. They have a fantastic array of antennas from 23cms up to QO100 sattelite dish. They have had a successful moon bounce QSO where they spoke to the USA. They are operating 2m/70cm along side the HF operation. There is a Hexbeam alongside a 40m dipole and vertical with the VHF/UHF beams on a rotator and as you can see, there are lots of tall poles. It was a great experience so please try to get hold of them while they are here. Both voice and CW!