By Allan Dodds,
English Correspondent.
What’s a "GB2SJ" ?
Well, I’m sure the radio hams among you have guessed it’s a callsign and this is one of the things I do 3 or 4 times a year to get out of the truck.
GB2SJ is a "Special Event" callsign held by my radio club, STARS, for use at Souter (pronounced "soo-ter") Lighthouse which is located a half hours drive or so down the coast from home. Normally, UK Special Event callsigns are allocated as GB2 plus 3 letters and only valid for a month at a time but, because this is an historic monument, and when in working order it held the callsign SJ for it’s own on-site radio station and later, navigation beacons, we were granted GB2SJ on a permanent basis. We "activate" it a few times each year by running a special event.
This time we commemorated "International Marconi Day", an event celebrated the world over by the radio community on the weekend closest to his birthday. All kinds of people clamor to contact our station when it’s on the air, not only other hams but also the other special event stations worldwide. There is a voluntary competitive element for participants: a certificate is available for operators and listeners who can verify that they worked (or heard, in the case of listeners) 15 or more Marconi stations with different levels of award for more stations contacted or heard, and yet more again for different types of transmission from Sideband to Morse Code and even some digital "data burst" type transmissions which need to be decoded by computer.
The lighthouse itself is quite important as lighthouses go. It was opened in 1871 in response to demands from the local sailors as 12 ships had been wrecked on the rocks along that stretch of coastline the previous year, driven on by the fierce onshore winds typical in the area. It was the first electrically powered lighthouse in the world, and still boasts radio equipment fabricated and installed a few decades later by Maconi himself and his assistants in the early years of his Wireless Telegraph Company. It’s an amazing place to visit, and very spooky at night as it’s allegedly haunted though I’ve not seen or heard anything. The light was switched off in 1998 and ownership handed over to The National Trust who maintain it exactly as it was the day it closed, with all equipment in working condition!
Usually we set up on the lawns out back, pitching 2 tents.
The older, square looking tent is our "International Technology Center, Ham Radio HF Special Event Station, Apartment Complex, Bar and Grill" with a home made woodburner/BBQ outside fabbed from an old 30 pound propane tank by Rob (please DON’T try welding or cutting a propane tank unless you really, REALLY know how to de-gas it completely!!!) 
and a table containing a working display of ex-British Army Clansman "portable backpack" HF radios.
I don’t know quite how "portable" a 50 pound backpack radio is under fire, especially when you also have to lug around battery packs and wind-up dynamo chargers, a fiberglass mast and kevlar reinforced antenna wire but it seems to be bulletproof so maybe the trick isn’t to run away but to hide as best you can and turn your back to the enemy while calling for reinforcements!
The other dome-shaped tent is "Dave’s Multi-Colored Pleasuredome" and it houses a VHF & UHF station and his stash of hidden candy that he thinks we don’t know about! 
Because of the severe winds both tents need to be well pegged down. Over the years we have developed our own system as normal pegs get pulled put by the wind and tossed across the field – then we have to go out in the dark and find them! The pegs we use now are 2 feet long, made of half inch round steel bar! The big tent has stood undamaged through several gale and storm force winds and it’s still waterproof. Probably for the best as we must have US$3,000 of equipment in there when we’re running. The dome tent is very good but has flexible poles and can often be seen blown flat so you can see the outline of the pillow in the bedroom! To its credit though it has only ever once snapped a pole.
The first of the guys arrives on the site around noontime to get the keys off the House Steward as it’s officially shut on Fridays. Everything has to come by private car as there’s no room for a truck around the perimeter of the lighthouse. In fact my Ford Explorer is the biggest car there and it only just fits around the last corner of the exit – a real challenge at night because it’s pitch black around there and the headlights reflect back off the white painted walls dazzling you. There are only a couple of inches to spare from the front bumper to the wall, and between the door handles on the other side and the corner of the building itself. Depending on the weather we’ll either put the big tent up for shelter (and to get the coffee on!!) or preferably start stringing out the wire HF antennas from the top of the lighthouse roof to the foghorn house roof. We use a simple vertical tri-band antenna for the 6 meters, 2 meters and 70cms bands with feed into the VHF/UHF tent.
From a club of over 40 members we usually only manage a half dozen or so volunteers to load in or load out. I guess that’s typical for most clubs but I make sure the workers are rewarded with trays of Danish pastries from Costco to go with the coffee. Of course everybody wants to come and "play radio" on the weekend and that’s great too because it’s nice to see friends who make a trip some distance to come visit us.
While setting up this year we got a pleasant surprise. A local news crew came to make a short local interest article on us, but when they went into the tent so "see what a ham radio station looked like" as they put it, we weren’t properly set up and all there was to see was a small mountain of booze & food stashed in the corner, a kettle simmering ready to make coffee and 24, 4 inch frosted Danish pastries to share among the 6 of us! Sensibly they elected to move across the lawn and take some footage of Mick operating his Clansman portable set, or rather pretending to operate it as the radio Gods weren’t playing at that time and the bands were dead!
The Marconi Day event runs from 00:01 to 00:00 on Saturday so Friday evening was a bit of goof-off time for the lads. We lit our new propane bottle wood burner/BBQ and put it through its paces, seeing if we could get it to glow cherry red in the darkness and eventually cooked some food on it and in it. Hint: 3 hours is WAAAY too long for baked potatoes. Even though they were big there was only about 3 teaspoonfuls of edible spud in the middle of a rock hard, black crust, Whoops!
I think we even did some radio as well (we’re famous for being the radio club that sets up equipment then does very little on the air, we’re all just glad to get some peaceful R&R time to ourselves!).
Despite the small mountain of food inside the tent Rob thought he’d better call his wife to bring some more, so at around 10pm Sandi came to our rescue with a big bag of bacon, sausage, eggs and bread and 2 kids who should have been (or maybe even were, before they were woken up!) in bed.
The kids were well catered for though, and even in the dark managed to have a blast on the play area which contains a clamber-on pirate ship, and railroad train, and two real, old fashioned fishing boats lit up by our maglites and a hastily re-arranged ropelight removed from around the tents. 
We made a start at midnight on the radio because there are a lot of early birds who like to log as many contacts as they can in the small hours but as most of us had been to work Friday we called it a day around 2am.
The rest of the crew took to the tents, but I’m too much of a vehicle dweller and I can never understand why folk elect to lie on the ground under canvas with the wind and rain keeping them awake when I have a really comfortable, well insulated & almost sound proof lie-flat bed in my Explorer with leather upholstery and heating, air conditioning and a surround-sound system with CD/DVD/MP3 player. It’s no truck sleeper but it beats a tent any day. Each to their own I guess!
Saturday was a busy day as usual with some guys making breakfast and others working the radios.
Once the washing up was done and beds tidied away the visitors started to arrive. Some of them are old friends and some were visitors to the lighthouse who had come along to take a look out of curiosity.
One or two of us spent some time repairing various electronic items.
After a quick trip home to make sure everything was OK I returned in the afternoon and spent some time chilling, wandering along the coastal path and listening to some radio traffic on the Marine and Air Bands for a change. They were very busy as our local river has a second bore being added to the toll tunnel and the river currently hosts a Dutch rock cutting suction dredger, barges for the spoil and several teams of divers along with the usual traffic.
At one point we were listening to a New Zealand station on the Clansman ex military radio and wondering why the operator of our station wasn’t calling him to try to make the contact. When we went to ask it turns out with all the technology we had in the tent he still couldn’t hear the New Zealand Station yet the little Clansman radio received it as clear as a bell on a much smaller antenna!
Despite calling on the more powerful main set and listening for a reply on the Clansman we didn’t make that contact but it just goes to show how very well made those military sets are. Maybe that’s why our Special Forces use them too, even when they can have the pick of anything on the market!!
Later in the evening Sandi came back with her two kids and one young lad who was a friend of her daughter. He was immediately taken with the radio gear and we taught him to tune the Clansman sets and properly resolve a signal.
We also learned that he came from a troubled home and had been adopted. He was the "unwanted half" of a brother & sister sdoption where the adoptive parents only wanted the little girl and treated him really badly. We let him stay on and eventually he was on the air sending a legally allowed "greetings message" to some friends we had called up for that purpose.
I filled in a commemorative "QSL card" for him which is a picture postcard of the lighthouse with some history on the back and the technical details of the contact with our station. Everybody who contacts our station gets one – usually via an international bureau set up by the various natonal Ham Radio Societies; that’s how to apply for one of the awards I mentioned but don’t hold your breath the system is extremely slow. The last envelope of incoming cards I received a few months ago contained some from stations I’d contacted in 1998!!
When I gave him the card you’d think I had given him a million dollars – his eyes lit up and he was so grateful. I don’t think many people ever give him much. Then the smile went out of his eyes and he said he thought his folks would rip it up when he took it home.
I made out a second, identical card for him and quietly gave it to Sandi so he could have one in safekeeping at their house in case the original was ripped up as he thought it might be.
We continued working radio on a sporadic basis when we could be bothered until midnight then continued talking into the night.
The next morning around 6am I woke up when I heard another car parking across from mine and the doors slam shut. Usually this is bad news – somebody burglarizing a car or trying to steal some of our gear so I slowly sat up and looked around, and saw two really smartly dressed young ladies and an, erm, "photographer"! I watched them disappear down the steps towards our campsite and decided to follow them.
On the lawn they were greeted by George who asked what they were doing - they were models on an "unofficial" photo shoot. Quite what kind of photos wasn’t clear but we can guess by the 6am start!
That’s nothing new for that secluded location, you’d be amazed what goes on in the dark and early morning light around those parts!
For any ham operators out there who might want to contact us, some of our guys will be working another special event from Fulwell Windmill with the callsign GB2FWM this weekend from 00:01 GMT on Saturday May 8 to lunchtime or so (hey, we have to work!) on May 9th.
My ham radio call is M0HGV. You never know, I plan on being there if you get through just ask for me
