It’s 21:30AEST and we’re hours into the ILLW & RD Contest Event.  The club caravan Is positioned backside into the wind this year following the lessons learnt in the early hours of 2014 (by VK2SMI and yours truly).  The weather has, unfortunately, turned a little sour in the late hours of the day, but the wind is down and rain is not excessively heavy.  Our intrepid President’s dedication knows no bounds as he’s been here since 1500 hours on Friday to secure the site for the club (and he’s still going!), and Stuart VK2FSTU is currently manning the desk.

The RD Contest has been in effect now for 8 and half hours and the team has run up 28 QSOs for a total of 28 points to date, and the ILLW event is currently running at 31 QSOs.  The RD contest has 15 and half hours to run and we’re very much looking forward to the double points of the early morning, assuming we’re still able to operate the radio and log the data out of one bloodshot eye.  🙂

All work to date has been on the club’s trusty IC738 hooked up to the caravan’s HF vertical, and the FT991 has been devoid of any contacts on either 6m, 2m or 70cm – no one wants to talk to us on the upper bands!  Perhaps the new day will be kinder to us on the higher frequencies…