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ZD8SIX on Ascension |
Friday 3rd November |
After breakfast in the mess (cost: five pounds) I spent a lot of time arguing with some guys on the island about where north actually was. The reason being that in last night's opening nothing seemed to be peaking where I expected it to be so I thought the antenna was misaligned. Someone eventually found a compass (something I forgot to pack) and I found that all was OK. I’ll take better notice tonight with respect to which direction European signals are arriving from. CQing again now at 11:00, but I bet it’ll be quiet until – yes, you have it, 20:00 tonight.
I
like the sign in my room next to the one warning you about mosquitoes.
Now, for our non-British readers of this article I suppose I had better explain "number one" and a "number two" are actually are with respect to personal hygiene in the bathroom. No, on second thoughts I better not. I'll leave it to your imagination! Put, it this way it's one of the first things any child learns about!
Nobody actually lives on Ascension permanently. The 1,100 who are counted as inhabitants are all contract personnel even though some have been on the island for twenty years. There is one small but amusing bureaucratic problem. When the navy ran the island as HMS Ascension, any child born here was regarded as having been born on a vessel at sea and had to be registered officially in London’s Borough of Wapping.
You can still this military background with many of the buildings in Georgetown surrounded by rocks painted white. There was a famous saying in the British army that went something like: "If it doesn’t move paint it white and if it moves…". Well, like number ones and number twos, some things are best left unsaid!
I have now learnt that it's coming to the end of the winter here and the travel documents say it should be hot and sunny. Well, since I’ve been here it has been clouded over and has rained both days.
Marvellous and shocked? I went to the local garage this morning to fill the car with petrol and expected the cost of petrol to be horrendously high being on a small remote island in the middle of nowhere, however it was only one pound Sterling a gallon! Compared to the 87 pence per litre cost in the UK this is remarkably cheap. It shows how much we pay in Britain in tax to the government. So I said fill it up! I then took a drive to the VERY top of Green Mountain to look for the ZD8VHF beacon now that I knew I could just ignore the no-entry sign. This took me past the Red Lion (no this is not a pub!) which is a building that used to be used as lodgings for the C&W managed farm many years ago. Right on top of the Mountain, at the end of a long path is the Dewpond, an artificial pond used for collecting rain water. Near the top as well is an old stone building called 'The Residency' which is all that remains of the old sanatorium used for sailors convalescing Yellow Fever. By the way, some of these dilapidated cottages would make FABULOUS locations for a radio shack. Anyone want a holiday home?
The
ZD8SIX beacon antenna in a sorry state after I had lifted off the ground a bit
I found the ZD8VHF beacon was easy enough to locate but the antenna was in a very sorry state as you can see from the photograph. The bracket holding it to the stone-built pump house wall was rotted off and the beacon was hanging at 40 degrees to the wall. The 6m G3JVL 5/8 vertical was not in good condition either and I marvelled that it still worked at all as I could hardly stand upright in the wind. It definitely needed replacing. The beacon itself is in a small stone-built building secured by a locked padlock.
Standing looking at the fantastic view from the top of Green Mountain, the thought came to me that this is real close to what you would imagine Robert Louise Stevenson’s Treasure Island would look like if it was real.
I managed to locate Adrian at Merlin Communications who said that the beacon hadn’t been looked after for years. After a few more calls, I tracked the key to the pump house building down to John, the Manager of the Works Department. I’ll go and pick the key at 3 p.m. and then take a look at the beacon electronics to see what state they are in.
The
old Victorian tunnel at the top of Green Mountain
Near the Red Lion is an old tunnel that cuts through the mountain in the last century so that water from the other side of the peak could be drained into storage tanks on the Georgetown side of the mountain. The water pipes can still be seen inside the tunnel. On the other side of the tunnel is a walk to Breakneck Valley called The Pines. In the last century, Norfolk pines were planted to provide new masts for sailing ships damaged in storms.
Ascension is a perfect place to lose weight. It’s 12:30 and I went to one of the few places in town (?) to get some food, the Reflections bar. It closed at 12:00! Even, even then it only sold microwaved pasties by way of food ( I learned later that it opens on a Saturday night for themed dinners.) I managed to get the last round of sandwiches from the NAAFI shop in Georgetown. Looks like lunch is a cheese & beef sandwich, a few chocolate digestive biscuits and a can of Carlsberg lager. No decent English keg beer either! By the way, I went to look for the Volcano Club last night only to be told was closed (I later discovered that that was wrong information). I’ll have to find somewhere tonight or the pounds will be dropping off me! Mind you, in the mess hall they had a pot of Marmite (a Brit’s favourite spread but hated by everyone else in the world) for my breakfast toast so all was not lost! No matter what ex British colony I’ve been to around the world, I can always get Marmite for my boiled egg toast soldiers. One of life’s little luxuries.
I picked up the keys to what is officially known as the ‘Farm Dosing Tank Room’ where the ZD8VHF beacon is kept so I will take another trip up Green Mountain in the morning. I’ll try and take some rope with me to temporarily secure the beacon mast in an upright position. I wonder if that will make the signal stronger?
A
joker near Comfortless Bay!
Another good day on the radio! It opened at 20:03 with SV5BYR and stayed open until 01:44. Looks like I’ll be lacking some sleep while here!
The major event of the evening was a major long-path opening to Japan that started at 22:32 with JF3GPS. All the signals were s5ish and getting calls out of the babble proved to be extremely troublesome. However I filled quite a few pages of my log. Jose, EA7KW was hearing this as well I understand. I managed to work Han, JE1BMJ, the UKSMG’s Japanese country manager. The European and Caribbean openings didn’t feel as good as yesterday though. I am sure that Europe comes in at a consistently funny angle. When the band opened, Nick 5B4FL called me and he peaked on 60o whereas the direct path is nearer 30o. This seemed to apply to all the Mediterranean stations. Long path to Japan was, as expected, at 240o. Maybe it's something to do my location near the equator?
Listen to my long-path JA opening as heard in Spain: one, two and three. (Thanks Jose! But, he was hearing only a fraction of the pile-up I think!)
I managed to pull in a few more new countries today including: YU, TR8, S5, TA, JA, KP2 and ZA. But still no northern Europe though. This is really, really disappointing. Up to 39 countries now. Also, I’ve had no real propagation during daylight hours and nothing from Australia in the mornings when something might be expected. I just noticed that the direct path to VK is straight through the bloody great mountain called Cross Hill just behind Georgetown. This may explain things.
Some of the many feral (wild) donkeys on the island.
The donkeys wonder over the island including the streets (well street actually) of Georgetown. On a couple of nights I was woken up by a donkey wondering around outside of my room in the middle of the night. The island also has a big problem with feral cats (though I didn't see any while there).
