Haven't done much radio now since the Stew Perry Contest back in December. Decided to bite the bullet and get the 2m amplifier fixed, and try to rekindle the dying embers of 2m. And it was great fun, with pretty average conditions for me, and a best DX somewhere around 850km in JO32 with DF0MU. I believe some folk worked an EA, which was nice. I did the 6 hour (3 + 3) section - the first 3 and the (nearly) last 3 hours. Seems like the level of activity up here is awful. I believe this is due to the restrictions in the use of the cluster.
The setup was an Elecraft K3 with Allan's (GM4ZUK) Elecraft TV144 transverter, an old MuTek MGF1302 on the mast, and a 17 element Tonna at 50ft or so, on the tower nearest the shack.
It occurs to me that I bought this house because it's a good VHF site, and I've spent the last 10 years trying to do well on HF with little success. Perhaps I ought to erect a decent system for VHF. Four big yagis would be difficult to keep up though.
Here's a pic of the broken head unit off the tower...
Busted Head Unit
The problem I have is that the tower is a very heavy duty 5 section tower, but only the bottom 3 sections are used, so the head unit needs these silly tabs to mate the head into the top section.