From Joe and Julie in Victoria, Australia:-around Australia and New Zealand, but nothing from further afield even on 20m. It was hard work with the RD contest finding other lighthouses, but we
were very pleased for the good turnout and it was not a problem to give out RD numbers. I was wondering if anyone has thought of an international
lighthouse calling frequency?
We had a very good response from the Queenscliff Borough Council too. The guys came out to see how it was all going. We had even done a bit of a
litter collection and fixed the security sign on the lighthouse fence, so they were happy. Quite a few WIA Calling CQ brochures handed out to members
of the general public, too.
Well, I noted that some lighthouse operators have it very easy indeed staying at the care-taker's house, or similar, with roast dinners, log fires
and egg and bacon breakfasts! While Julie and I were camped out in the X-Trail freezing our finals off. Never mind, we both enjoyed it so much.
Thanks for coordinating everything Kevin. Sorry we didn't hear Greencape.
We'll try again next year.
Cheers and 73 from Julie and Joe.
From Portsmouth, England,
I gave it my best shot using a 100W into a trap dipole on 20/40m only and despite the pile-ups worked 65 Lighthouse activations over the weekend with 28 hours in the chair. A really great experience and challenge.
Thanks & 73 to all involved.
Mick - M0GWD
Portsmouth
Only two problems: the weather, and the RD contest.Anyway we made it on NBN Television News on the Saturday night.
It was good publicity for ILLW and Westlakes.
73 Greg VK2CW
This year it was my pleasure to again activate the Currie Light House AU-0016 on King Island (VK7). King Island is situated at the Western end of Bass Strait, Tasmania and faces the Southern Ocean in the Roaring Forties.
I arrived on the Island, as usual, several days ahead of the weekend and was able to activate KI from my accommodation which allowed me to provide IOTA OC233 to about 220 keen Island hunters on 40 & 20m.
Saturday morning dawned with clear skies and very little breeze ensuring that my Rigging and Radio set up went smoothly………. A stark contrast to 2013 with the howling winds and heavy rain.
Saturday morning was spent on 40m making as many contacts as possible….. mostly VK with a few NZ contacts including Light Houses. 20 m was the selected Band in the afternoon where many VK/JA/EU stations were added to the Log. The Saturday total being 169 contacts.
Again Sunday weather was ideal and I was joined by King Island resident Dale VK7YR. Dale spent several hours on the microphone giving out RD numbers if requested. Interest in the Light House really started to peak again after the RD Contest concluded and at about 0400z 20m was the target band. Total Sunday contacts was 149. 70 VK and 79 DX.
QSL Cards for the VK3VTH/7 will going out via the Bureau real soon and all contacts were Loaded into eQSL as VK3VTH/7
Thanks to Dale VK7YR , Richard, Sue and Ondrea. Their assistance is critical to the activation and their help is much appreciated.
Back in 2015!
73 Tony VK3VTH
Just wanted to send my thanks for setting up this event. Had a GREAT time at the Verona Beach light (US 0184). Made 83 lighthouse and 4 lightship contacts operating for about 30 total hours. Made many, many more total qso's of course but I was going for the lights and ships! Many thanks and looking forward to 2015 :)
Fred Legawiec, W2LGA
Once again, many thanks from the Rockhampton and District Amateur Club to the organizers of the ILLW.
This year, the weather caused a few changes including an early trip to Cape Capricorn for the crew of Clive VK4ACC, Mike VK4LMB, Shaun VK4NSP, Len VK4WAL, Garry VK4FAEN, Les VK4VIL, Peter ( travels annually from the Australian Capital, Canberra) and Rod (Boat Captain, Nemo). We were there for eight days this time, travelling from the mainland for the five hour journey to the Cape.
During the activation, winds varied from about 5 knots to 35 knots, with rain on three days, including Saturday of the event.
Propagation was not as kind as for 2013, however we managed over 300 HF contacts and logged 45 lighthouses, including USA, Germany, England, Chile and New Zealand.
Working conditions included a 590 Kenwood and Icom 706’s, a 3 element 20m beam, 80m off centre fed dipole and 40m loop, but with an elevation of about 100m and sheer cliffs down to the sea, who need a KW.
Being our 5th year at Cape Capricorn, we decided we have enough data to tell us that the fish only bite when long distance HF propagation is poor - Hi Hi. Yes the fish were on the bite and we had some great meals, thanks to our official chef, Clive ACC.
Once again, we are indebted to or boat owner, Rod and Bruce Kingston and partners of Cape Capricorn Lighthouse Escape, leasees and operators of the facility.
Looking forward to 2015 and catching up with friendships formed over our trips and to new contacts.
Les VK4VIL
From the Faroe Islands OZ7CCC:-
location I had several references: ILLW FO0003 for the lighthouse, WCA OY00001 for the Fortress, OZFF-007 for WWFF, IOTA EU-018 for the Island and OY Faroe Islands for DXCC .In contrast to last year, where I was in Germany and could reach most stations easily on 40m, I had now to operate on the best band 20m. Sadly there was running a Russian Contest what caused a lot of qrm. Some russian stations asked me to give them a serial contest number. Okay – no problem!
Temperatures were around 8°C (August!) and wx from very sunny to rain. My station was a linked inverted V dipole and a FT-817 transceiver with 5 watts output. All QSOs were made in CW. This weekend I used first time the DXW174 coax cable by DX-Wire. Well, this cable is a little bit fuzzy, hard to handle, because of the massive inner conductor. But it works good (okay – I had in this moment nothing to compare). The GFK mast was by DX-Wire, too. The 10m minimast, pushed together = 67cm, 1.3 kilo weight.
ILLW was again a lot of fun again this year. At 14.30h local time I made qrt because I had a date with some local HAMs at their clubstation OY6FRA.
CU next year again from another lighthouse …
From VK3OLS Cape Otway lightstation AU0011 team
Thanks to Kevin VK2CE and his team for all their efforts once again this year this is the 7th year we have travelled the great ocean road down to Cape Otway for the illw and again we have a logbook full of contacts from all over the world. Sorry Joe we are one of the lighthouses that get to have the roast and log fire we were blessed this year with perfect weather for the weekend.
We will see/hear you all again next year.
73 and cheer’s
Andy VK3VKT and the team
PS: also look out for us @ Split Point Lighthouse in 2015 AU003
It was a very nice lighthouse weekend, even if much rain we had storm and it was cold. As one of the few inland lighthouses in Germany (500km away from the coast) our callsign DM2C/LH was much in demand. Very good conditions in SSB on 40meters and 80 meters but especially Europe, on 17 and 30 meters a lot of CW QSO´s many nice and good DX, especiallyto Japan. Unfortunately, by the RDA Contest on 20 and 15 meters operating much. Many visitors and a vy good marketing for our hobby!!We look forward to the ILLW 2015!!
73 de Steffen (DM6WAN) & Team
Video clip on Youtube - click here.
From South Africa, ZS5HAM:-
We arrived at the site at about 07.00AM cat on Saturday morning and set up our field
antennas which were two dual inverted dipoles single fed, one for 80/40M and the other for 20/10M. We also had a Hy-Gain 14AVQ HF vertical for 10/15/20/40M and a 5Element vhf and 8 Element uhf yagi to keep in touch with our local Clubs repeater.(145.625Mhz 434.650Mhz respectively).
The station was manned by myself Max Rossi (ZS5MAX) and Robin Marshal (ZS5ROB). We set up camp by the Maintenance Cottage on the site which is about 30M from the light house and the light house keepers Cottage.
We had a wonderful weekend here and had a lot of visitors to the light house and in turn at our station by curious onlookers.
WE WERE HERE LAST YEAR AS WELL BUT WE DID NOT STAY OVER NIGHT AS THIS TIME.
We worked over 230 stations this year and have registered this light house again for 2015.
THANK YOU FOR A TRULY WONDERFUL EVENT
73's
Max Rossi deZS5MAX
Robin Marshal deZS5ROB
HIGHWAY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB (HARC)
From Cape May, New Jersey:-
The Cape May County Amateur Radio Club was pleased to again participated in the ILLW from the Cape May Lighthouse at Cape May Point, New Jersey. The club operated two stations. Our most productive band was 40 meters. We had a total of 418 contacts in 22 states and Canada. Three on 75M, 391 on 40M, 22 on 20M, and two on 10M. We worked sixteen US lighthouses, one US lightship, and four Canadian lighthouses. The weather cooperated, it was a lovely weekend. This year we say goodbye to our ILLW Chairman of the past several years, N3EA. He is moving and will be missed. We have welcomed our new ILLW Chairman, WA3DSP. He is working on plans for our participation in 2015.73
Bill Cole, N2CSA
Thank you for all your hard work organising the ILLW. Thank you also for including a hyperlink on the ILLW site to the video I filmed of mylocal lighthouse GB8SL at Shoreham in Southern England. I have attached a photo that I took from inside the operating tent, which I am happy foryou to use on the ILLW website if you would like to.
I was active from my home QTH using my callsign M0MNG for about 12 hours altogether across the weekend. Most contacts came on the Saturday,mainly using SSB on 40 meters and running 20 Watts. I worked 39 lighthouses altogether (42 if you count duplicates!) in the UK, Ireland,Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Portugal. Despite French being my "best" foreign language, I didn't work any French lighthouses at all unfortunately! I had hoped to work one of them on 2 meters SSB with my small horizontal beam, but sadly it did not come to pass... well notthis year anyway. Maybe next year.
I would really encourage people to have a go at speaking foreign languages on the air, because it can make a big difference. For examplethere was at least one German lighthouse who seemed to be having QSOs in German and nothing else. I have my doubts that they would haveresponded to me if I had called them in English alone. My German is not particularly good but it was good enough for a basic QSO to result.
GB8SL ran 400 Watts and had contacts on 80 - 17 meters with by far the majority on 40 meters SSB - although we did have a CW operator onSaturday afternoon. Our best DX came on 20 meters SSB early on Sunday morning, when we worked a couple of New Zealand stations and one in theCook Islands. I had to leave Sunday lunchtime several hours before GB8SL went QRT, and we were well on the way to 400 QSOs even by that stage.
ILLW is my favourite Special Event weekend by far and I am already looking forward to 'chasing lighthouses' from home once again in 2015. Next year I must be more adventurous and work the higher HF bands in addition to the ever-faithful 40 meter band. Maybe some kind of antennafor 80 meters would be good as well.
I send my best 73 to all lighthouse fans wherever they are located in the world.
Edmund M0MNG
From Ipsili Lighthouse, Greece:-
So, the 4 of us (SV5AZP, SV5DDT, SV5DKL & SV5KKA) traveled from Rhodes to Kastellorizo on August 15th and at noon, we were transferred to Stroggili islet with the aid of Greek Army. Getting all of our gear off was an issue as there is no dock or port installations on Stroggili. Thankfully, the guys at Stroggili gave a big helping hand and we all got approximately 15kgs of personal gear plus a 10kg case on each hand, climbing through a path at an altitude of 83m in a distance of about 250m ... just imagine the inclination ... !!
At Friday evening, we had setup 2 complete stations, comprised of a FT-897 and a FT-857D, having also another FT-857 as a reserve.
Antennas set up were a l/4 vertical for 40m and a FD-4 Windom. Traffic was constant, but not heavy. It was somewhat relaxing working the correspondents. On Saturday 16th August, in the morning we took up the Cushcraft MA5B on a 6m aluminum mast and a stack of 6m & 2m yagis on another mast on the lighthouse`s building. Traffic kept going so it was a non-stop operation. Our shack was set out in the field, as the container we had been given for our premises, was too hot to stay in during the daytime. However, staying outside was also not too comfortable at times. We had to use a 2.7m x 4m Greek flag as a tent for our shack, as the sun was too hot. It is worth noting that on Saturday noon, we had no wind at all (even though on the top of a Rock at Eastern Mediterranean sea!) and temp was 42 deg. Celcius !! The FT-897 was malfunctioning due to high temp and we stuck to only one op. and one radio with small time shifts. We called our shack "The frying pan" just to entertain the situation ...
Things kept going like this until Sunday evening, when we had to start disassembling our setups. We kept just one station with the 40m vertical for the night, because on Monday morning (August 18th), Army`s boats would pick us up early.
On Monday morning, everything got packed up again and after the traditional photos with the Lighthouse`s crew, we started our descent through the path with the sharp rocks, to get to our pickup point. Descent was, of course, much easier than the ascent, still it was an adventurous one, too! Boats were already expecting us as per our appointment. In less than 5 minutes, our gear was loaded on and we were bidding farewell to Stroggili islet.
Back to Kastellorizo for coffee and cheese pie! We are exhausted ... but proud to have completed successfully a difficult operation, to have passed the message that Stroggili islet is not a forgotten piece of Greek soil, on the contrary it is standing tall, with its beautiful Lighthouse Ipsili, waving the Greek flag onto this southeasternmost part of Greece. Our mini DXpedition ended on Monday afternoon, arriving at Rhodes port, with our families waiting impatiently for us.
Being a part of 2014`s ILLW was a target well appointed and we are very happy to have contributed a bit in the continuation of this institution. Hopefully, in 2015`s event, we will be able to activate another rare Lighthouse of Dodecanese area.
A summary of our QSOs:
1251 QSOs made in total, 446 in SSB, 760 in CW, 29 in PSK31, 15 in RTTY and 1 in FM.
Total DXCCs worked: 73
It is remarkable that on Saturday we made 527 QSOs, exactly as much as made on Sunday !!
EU got 85% of our QSOs, leaving AS 2nd with 10%, followed by NA with 4.2%.
Our most active band was 17m with 670 QSOs, followed by 40m with 212 QSOs.
The station who worked us most times was Karl, DK5LP, with 6 QSOs, in 4 bands.
We remind that the full log has already been uploaded to Clublog and eQSL.cc
For paper QSL requests, our manager is SV5AZP (QRZ.com address).
On behalf of the Team,
73
Efstathios Maliakis, SV5DKL
From Taiwan:-
Greetings from the Santiao Chiao lighthouse, TW0003, Taiwan(AS-020).
We arrived at the site around 08.40AM, very very hot temperature 37~38C and bright sunshine in lighthouse area. We used wire dipole for 10M band only. We don't have too much contact. The BV0LH is Taiwan first special callsign for ILLW. We also print ILLW logo on BV0LH QSL card.
73!
Tim, BV0LH
Report from OH2Y/6 – TANKAR, FINLAND, ILLW 0019
Our small radio club planned long for this weekend. And it was a great experience.
The target was Tankar Lighthouse, ILLW FI0019, IOTA EU-101, located 15 km to the sea from Kokkola, a seaport on the Gulf of Bothnia. The island is now one of the most visited lighthouses in Finland, with regular passenger ferry service from Kokkola. There is quite a lot to see, the 125 year old lighthouse (now temporarily closed for visitors), sealhunting museum, a small church built by the fishermen, even a cosy café. Accommodation in old sea-pilots` residence.
Thanks to local connections, we were allowed to use the old foghorn house for our station. Electricity was available and open space for antennas. We had nothing but wires with us and there was nothing much else than bushes around. Finally we succeeded in erecting a windom and a dipole for 30 m.
Two stations, K3 for CW, KX3 + 100W linear for PSK and RTTY. We had a total of 373 QSOs, of which 294 on digimodes. We felt the rare LH and also the IOTA kept a moderate pileup running. And we feel the need was not fully satisfied. Maybe we must go back!
In beautiful sunny weather, it was all a great trip.
Operators were Eero, OH2MQ, Timo, OH2BMH, Risto, OH2LCP, Osmo, OH2BEC, Jyrki, OH3QK.
73 de Hyvinkää Radio Club, OH2AU and OH2Y
Click here to download a pdf file covering the operation at Avery Point, USA. The file is 1mb but is well worth reading as the quality of the report is excellent.
ILLW.net is the official web site for this annual amateur radio weekend event. The domain name and web site are owned and maintained by Kevin Mulcahy, vk2ce. The html, data, and graphics are protected by copyright. The logo is a Registered Trade Mark (TM 1227625) and may not be reproduced without the express permission of the Owners. Copyright © 2015 International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend - ILLW.net. All Rights Reserved.