Saturday 16th April saw the long-awaited inaugural LIDS CW Boot Camp. Ten LIDS members from as far afield as Kent gathered in Bristol for a day of CW practice, learning, discussion and fellowship.
Many practice QSOs were made across the room, some using sidetone oscillators but also radio-to-radio QSOs by connecting dummy loads to the antenna sockets. Pick a band, any band…
We had a 30m station set up for ‘live’ CW contacts and, although the antenna was a simple dipole folded around the ceiling, it tuned up and had got some RBN spots in Spain and Germany the day before. Unfortunately the band conditions were awful during the morning and we were also suffering from S6-7 of noise so it wasn’t until later in the afternoon that G0POT ‘broke the duck’ with a QRS contact with EA7JUK. Of course, everyone else in the room was working to copy both sides of the QSO.
Attendees were (in LIDS# order): David G7AGI (#003), Michael G0POT (#027), Matt M0CUV (#040), Paul G0WAT (#051), Steve M0SPN (#059), Simon M3HXE (#069), Paul M0PNA (#114), Matt 2E0LJZ (#116), John M0HFH (#128), and Mike G8HKS (#139).
Thank you and well done to all the LIDS who attended. We would love to be able to do another boot camp and hopefully in a different location so that they can be accessible to those for whom Bristol was a little too far to travel.