Page 48 - Yachter Autumn 2021

48 FEATURE
REWARDS
Seawater surrounding the boat clearly provides an excellent ground plane. Coupled with a quiet electronic environment, at sea or in quieter anchorages, some rewarding results can be had. In our relatively brief experience of amateur radio to date, highlights have included:
• Participation in the RNARS 80m Saturday and Sunday 0800 Nets, communicating across the UK
• Participation in the FRARS 2m Net (Newtown Creek to Parkstone / Wimborne – approx. 25 miles)
• Participation in the South Hampshire 4m net.
• 90 miles into Blandford Repeater GB3DT from off St Vaast, east of Cherbourg on 70cm/UHF
• 60 miles on 70cm UHF H/H into Ventnor repeater GB3IW (Chain Home site) from Fort La Roule above Cherbourg, commemorating a post D-Day communications link
• 1,446 miles to KMI8GT Thermopylae Special Event station in Greece on 20m.
LICENSING CONDITIONS
Ofcom have recently been in contact with both Amateur and Marine radio licence holders regarding new regulations and licensing conditions. Essentially, these require us to check the safety ranges of all our transmitting equipment, to make sure we are not harming other people.These are relatively simple to complete, by inputting a few parameters to an online calculator and then printing out the result. More
information is available here, which will also take you to a link to Ofcom’s EMF Calculator: https://tinyurl.com/7733j7db Steve and Cathy Lacey