Preparations are well under way for the upcoming ILLW event at Cromwell Point Lighthouse, on Valentia Island. Permission has been once again kindly granted by the Commissioners of Irish Lights for the radio club to activate the site.
The main antenna is once again going to be the full size G5RV which has been used with great success in previous years.
The antenna for the secondary station is a new antenna this year. It is a 80mtr half wave dipole which has been specially constructed to take acccount of the environmental conditions that prevail at the site. This new antenna has been sucessfully tested and is now stowed ready for deployment at the event.
A Drake MN2700 antenna tuning unit has also been modified for the event. The longwire connections have been replaced by a panel containing two BNC sockets. The tuner was modified for two reasons. Firstly to take account of the coaxial cables being used having BNC connectors and secondly as the longwire terminals were not being used, changing them to BNC sockets now allows four different coaxial outputs to be selected on the tuner. This tuner has also been sucessfully tested with the afore-mentioned antenna.
A ground plane vertical antenna for 6mtrs will be deployed again this year. In previous years this antenna has proven extremely successful with a pile up being experienced on one occassion.
The club bandpass filters will be used, allowing operation of multiple stations while reducing the potential for interference between stations.
The antenna and stations will be set up and tested on Friday afternoon, allowing operations to commence at Midnight using the club callsign of EI 1 KARG.