I asked my boy where he wanted to go for our autumn break, and was told we should go to Paris. No further explanation as to why was forthcoming, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that Lionel Messi now plays for PSG. If you don’t know who Lionel Messi is, that’s totally forgivable – but he is quite brilliant. He has managed to make a career out of (expertly) kicking air encased in leather. And as I understand it, he’s also a rather nice guy; not necessarily true of everyone in his chosen “profession”!
Now 4 days in Paris with no radio sounded like a tall order, so I did warn him there’d be at least one radio outing. But to be honest, I think he was just happy not to have to walk up another mountain 🙂
According to Google Maps the park with the Eiffel tower in it is called “Champ de Mars”, and this is where I make camp. As has become the habit lately, I brought my inverted-V dipole for 20m, the Yaesu FT-817ND, the tiny computer and DigiRig for running FT8/FT4. Wanting to keep it light, I went for the internal battery in the little Yaesu. Which means an output power of about 2.5W. Couple that with about 10m of RG316 (cheap, of Ebay), and I would estimate the radiated power to be around 1.5W! Not that that was a problem for the little radio that could! About 40 minutes of FT8/FT4 netted me the following 13 entries in the log:
- MM0HVU David – Scotland
- EA1C Juan Carlos – Spain
- ES6DO Neil – Estonia
- MI1CCU Ian – Northern Ireland
- SP2GCJ Zenon – Poland
- IS0KNG Raffaele – Sardinia
- OK1AW Pavel – Czech Republic
- HG8LXL Laszlo – Hungary
- 2M0DWC Dennis – Scotland
- EB3DIM Manel – Spain
- OK7AJ Antonín – Czech Republic
- HA7TM Tibor – Hugary
- EA1IOK Miguel Angel – Spain
