Easter holidays are here again and I’m visiting North Devon with my Clansman PRC320. I’ve been experimenting with the SPDX contest.

Some predictions showed that 20m would be the best bet in the daytime with perhaps some action on 40m in the evening.

Unfortunately my holiday home faces 180 degrees in the wrong direction so operating from the home the antenna is screened from Poland by the building and a big hill. Nonetheless I was able to make a few good QSOs from my room using an inverted v dipole antenna hanging out of a window.

The setup worked quite well considering I only have 35w to play with in the PRC320 and the antenna being very low and screened from the target call signs. In the evening I tried an end fed 1/4 wave on the 40m band but with limited success. Looking in more detail in the manual it seems the PRC320 manual tuner is really designed for an end fed 1/2 wave but I didn’t really have space for that. I might experiment on the 20m band later in the holiday.

On the second day of the contest I decided to build something more substantial in a local field, the same antenna in a similar configuration but this time on top of the hill on a 5.4m mast. It was a bit wonky as there was no space for guy lines without obstructing the footpath and it was blowing a gale! This worked better but time was limited due to family commitments and the cold wind.

To round off the day I did a quick 20 minutes of POTA on the beach using the whip antenna which worked well to a few EU stations.