1985 VHF NFD
The club, from past records seen in the 80's, did operate in the 50's and 60's from Chapel Hill, Barrington. Enquires were made to various landowners and Brian Wilson (G6YAD now G0KFQ)and Mike Newport (G8VCN) from memory, but easily others too, negotiated to use two sites. Max Westley (G4WEZ) produced the publicity material flyer for distribution to club member, in the same vain as his excellent illustrations of the 80's Cambeam front covers.
It is reproduced below. From issue 10 of Cambeam (ed S.Platt), the report says we entered the restricted section. Interestingly there is a reference to cycling up "Money Hill", rather than Chapel Hill, Money Hill is close to the lower site used but well away from the road, one would cycle up Chapel Hill (steep), possibly is it known as Money Hill too?
Overall we came 34th out of 66 entries, with (normalised) 1040 points out of a possible 3231 by the winner, the individual bands as follows
4 meters (G2XV) - 42/46, with 246 points from 49 CW QSOs and 337 points from 59 SSB QSOs, aerial was a 4 element yagi.
2 meters (G8EVY) - 39/65, with 1250 points from 184 QSOs, best DX HB9DB/p at 752 Km, aerial was a 16 element Jaybeam.
70 cm (G6ASH) - 50/64, with 320 points from 77 QSOs, best DX PA0GUS/p at 382 Km in JO23RD, aerial was a 11 turn helical.
23 cm (G6KWA) - 23/33 148 points from 33 QSOs, best DX as 70 cm, no details on the aerial lookslike a 23 element yagi
Below are some of the people who attended and operated, there were many more of course. Equipment was sourced or borrowed for the club's first attempt for many years at VHF NFD and was a great team effort, with a can do attitude from everybody. This was the start of many years of VHF NFD operations at CDARC, a lot recorded on this site, but also on the official CDARC site latterly. Lots of experience gained this weekend, memo to get low loss feeders for next time.
Builders yard - 2m and 4m, it was strewn with junk and materials, it was hard to find a clear patch for the tents.
Top of the hill 70cm and 23 cm, we figured that they would work best at the top of the hill.
