Banbury to Upper Heyford - with a stop for BERU

I needed somewhere quiet to stop for the weekend. Somewhere away from all the electrical noise that domesticity provides and also somewhere where I could be and it did not matter if I ran my generator after 8p.m.
I found that place about 3 miles south of Banbury and as luck would have it, not far from the M40 so I had Internet access which was a bonus.

Warning - 'Techy stuff' coming!

BERU, OR MORE CORRECTLY, ‘THE COMMONWEALTH CONTEST’ 2016

I have entered the BERU contest many times, sometimes from the home QTH and sometimes from my narrow-boat ‘Constance’ somewhere on the canal system. This year I decided to operate from the boat at a quiet location about 3 miles south of Banbury on the South Oxford Canal.

The rig used was my Yaesu FT-897 running 100w into a trapped dipole/inverted ‘V’. Power to be supplied from my pure-sine 1kVA generator. The trapped dipole is a 100w version of the QRP model which I made for my Australia trip. The laptop was running N1MM+ with a G4ZLP keyer.

The operating position

Yes, the mast was leaning at that angle deliberately, it follows the angle of the boat's 'tumble-home' and was securely fixed.

The trapped dipole was 22 feet above the canal

The ends of the 80m section were 6 feet above the canal. The cranked TV mast supports the 3G dongle

Food on the go. Can't stop...

Promlems? Yes I had one or two problems. All the kit was tested from my back garden at home. The system as tested included the generator and the power supply. When I started up on the boat I had two different types of QRM. One was fairly quickly tracked down to the Solar Panel controller, so the solar panel was disconnected. The second source (S9++) hash was a bit more difficult to track down. Eventually found to be the on-board battery charger which automatically starts up whenever it sees 240v mains. Once the QRM was sorted the background noise was not measurable on the S-meter on any band. I had chosen a quiet location, no power lines, no houses, no trains but close enough to the M40 to get excellent 3G Internet. All was set for a good BERU session except that HF radio conditions were not that good in the higher bands. Throughout the whole contest I never heard any resolvable station on 10m and only a few on 15m.

The results were a total of 59 QSOs spread: 80m - 8, 40m - 8’

20m - 39, 15m - 4 with none on 10m

After working on 40m for about an hour in the evening the 40m leg of the antenna suddenly went VHSWR. No explanation, can’t see anything wrong with it but reckon I lost a lot of points because that would have been the best band for evening working.

Bagged 31 Canadians, 12 VKs and 2 ZLs along with 9H, 9J, 9M, C4, ZS, ZB2, J34, VP9 and really fed-up as I heard AT1 calling/being worked several times but did not recognise the prefix as Commonwealth!

Overall, the kit worked well (with the exception of the loss of 40m) and the location was quiet. I found the band conditions to be unexciting and many stations were a struggle to complete. Oh well! There’s always next year…

 

End of 'Techy stuff'...

 

Once the contest had finished it was on towards Upper Heyford.

A tight squeeze under Nell Bridge

With an inch to spare on the 'water level' board

Loadsa floods

Through Somerton Deep Lock

Then a short cruise to Lower Heyford.

 

 

Back on the cut - Hooray!

Constance was due to leave the Fenny Compton Marina by the end of February. I was not quite quick enough to take a 'selfie' of my smile as I left the marina and headed south. Just to be back on the cut with the wind in my face felt marvellous.

A vacant berth

Going out...

 

Claydon Top Lock - a lovely spot to pause

A little dickie bird told me that Ann & Chas were on boars Moore to Life in Cropredy Marina. This called for a visit to them, tea and cookies etc. I had not seen them for some while, nor had I seen the new M2L so it was a good afternoon session.
The next afternoon I was in Cropredy and they returned the compliment. They had never seen Constance so they brought cake! It was great to see them.
The next move was to Banbury where I caught up with Maffi and had a long chat with him. I replaced the leisure batteries as I had been nursing them along for several years. Booked a blacking with Tooley's for later in the year. loafed around Banbury. Great week!

Beautiful pairs of swans in peak condition

They wanted feeding in Banbury

NB Constance

I was reminded whilst visiting family in Australia that I did not have any recent photos of 'Constance' on my blog. Having made a quick visit to check that everything was OK, I took some photos. So here they are...

Narrow-boat Constance

The galley

The cosy loo

The cosy shower

The dining area

The galley

The lounge & log-burner

Ditto

Stern under winter coverings

It was quite fortuitous that I put Constance into Fenny Compton Marina for the winter. It meant that I did not have to worry about moving her whilst we were away in Australia. It is nice having electricity on board during the very coldest part of winter. The batteries can be kept charged and a frost-stat governed radiator give added peace of mind.

Northabouts (Part 2)

After staying with Adrian and Sasha for a few days, looking round Sydney and going out on the boat on the Hawkesbury River it was time for us to move on. We headed west from Sydney into the Blue Mountains at Katoomba.

The Leura Cascades in the rain

Me playing with the camera to get a special effect on the water

More cascades

Leura Falls

Leura Falls

The Three Sisters, now you see them...

Now you don't

Then you see them again for a fleeting glance

Having obliged someone else with a photo, he returned the compliment

The next morning it was too foggy to see anything so we moved on, northwards to Mudgee

Passing through wide open spaces

Lake Windamere (no, not a spelling mistake)

Kelly's Irish Pub, Mudgee



The old department store, Mudgee

The Catholic Church, Mudgee

The old Bank buildings, Mudgee

 From Mudgee we went on a day trip to Hill End. Hill End was a gold mining village. It had a short life, starting in about 1870, peaking in 1872 and pretty much abandoned by 1874. In its heyday there were a good couple of thousand inhabitants. One of them was a keen photographer. He photographed just about every building and person in the town. This archive was discovered in a cellar in Sydney in the early 1950s. This has enabled historians to work out where every property was, what it looked like and who lived there. Pretty much every name of all of the inhabitants has now been worked out and recorded.

The Hill End shop and café of today

The Royal Hotel, open for service.

One of the restored houses

This one is now a shop

This side of the road was a line of shops. Each has a marker board with a photo of what used to be there

Kangaroos in the old industrial mining areas.

Mineshaft

One of the chuches

The cemetery, about a mile out of town

 From Hill End we drove back to Mudgee for the night. The next day we drove on up to Gulgong. Gulgong is about the same age as Hill End and the town has kept and restored a lot of its old buildings.

As its name suggests... Frequented by the Prince of Wales when he went to...

The opera house - Dame Nellie Melba sang here

Much as it was in the 1870s

Australia moved from £ to AUS $ in 1966. The town of Gulgong featured on the original $10 note

 After Gulgong we went towards Ulan, with two stops on the way. Stop number one was for a place called 'The Drip' We followed a river valley...

The walk down the river valley to 'The Drip'

Judy at 'The Drip'

 There is a fault line in the overhanging rock which allows a line of water drips to fall into the river below. It was nice and cool here. The cicadas in the trees were absolutely deafening. They seemed to perform a 'Mexican Wave' of sound from one end of the river bank to the other.
A couple of miles north of 'The Drip' is 'Hands on the Rock'. Here are some Aboriginal rock paintings. At first they are difficult to see, once you have seen some, you can see them all over the wall. In some places there are pictures of animals.


Hands on the Rock

Our journey took us on to Ulan, then to Cassilis and Singleton. From Singleton we took 'The Putty Road' back towards Sydney. What a lovely drive that was too!

Beautiful scenery

We stopped beside the Hawkesbury River at Windsor for lunch

These electric barbecue sites can be found all over Australia, what a great idea!

We arrive back in Sydney, caught up with Adrian and Sasha before flying back to London. It was certainly an adventure!