Skerries Radio Club

Mills on the Air Weekend

EI80IRTS at Skerries Mills

On the weekend of the 12^th and 13^th of May, Skerries radio club (EI2NCR) were setting up for their usual Mills on the Air weekend, but this time the club was delighted to be able to use the I.R.T.S. special anniversary callsign EI80IRTS for the Mills on the air weekend.

Our shack and aerial

The club members started to arrive at 9:00 on the Saturday and work soon began to assemble the base and the telescopic mast (seen on the left) with the mast at its full height of 35ft, the full size G5RV was attached and raised by using the lanyard, the ends of the wire aerial were also raised up by 20 ft so the aerial was not quite a long wire but more a inverted V in appearance.

Ben EI4IN and John EI8BX

The attention was then turned to the shack end of the station (seen on the left) with the clubs Kenwood TS570D being the main radio and an one of our members Icom 737 as the backup. With the Mill having its own mains power it was a great saving in not having to bring a generator for the power, and all that comes with it to the site.

The station was on air at around 10:30 and after some listening around 7 MHz was the band of choice chosen to start with.

The 40m band was very noisy and the situation was also not helped by the several generators used at the nearby Farmers market only a couple of hundred meters away from the Mill.

The EI80IRTS callsign was in great demand and the stations worked were delighted to get a double whammy as EI80IRTS was not only the I.R.T.S. special anniversary callsign but a Mill station as well.

The Club started by spinning around the band looking for other Mill stations for the first part of the day and got many a UK and Dutch mills and whilst we could hear stations working fellow Irish Mills we could not hear them at all. We had to finish by 18.00 hours as we were not aloud to stay over night at the Mills due to the usual terms and conditions (health, safety and insurance) but as some of the members lived under the shadow of the Mill it was a safe bet that a soft bed was preferred rather than to a stony floor and having to put up with some of the Mills other guests, as seen in the picture below.

When the club members arrived bright and early on Sunday they found that the wind from Saturday had not only gotten stronger but had also changed direction, the first job was to move the stay rope attached to the top of the mast as the pull from the other side of the mast was so great from the wind acting on the wire and ropes that the mast was in danger of buckling under the force of the wind, and the base had already started to lift slightly when it was being hit by some of the strong gusts. With that problem sorted out the business of working some more Mill stations was the order of the day, having got several more Mills we decided to put a few calls out there on a spot frequency and had many stations calling back to us. Again we worked more UK and Dutch Mills, and most of the rest of Europe, even fellow Irish Mill (EI2EWN).

All to soon it was time to shut the station down, it seemed that it was easier to take everything down and pack the gear away for the next time and having access to such a good sight it will not be to long before we will be back in Skerries Mill again, as it is a shame to only use it once a year.