This is an article written for the Happisburgh Lighthouse newsletter which I thought NARC members may also enjoy. Thanks to everyone who supported the event.
International Lighthouses & Lightships on the Air is an annual event where radio amateurs and clubs from around the world set up ham radio stations in local lighthouses and lightships. Norfolk Amateur radio club are proud to have run their event from Happisburgh Lighthouse for over 20 years and this year the international event was on the weekend of 15th & 16th August using our ’special event’ callsign GB0HL.
As usual we set up an ‘HF station’ (sometimes called Short Wave) with an end fed long wire antenna between the top of the lighthouse and a stake in the surrounding field. UK contacts were as local as Norwich, Ipswich and Colchester but also further afield including contacts with the other three nations including Glasgow, Colwyn Bay and Belfast. Internationally we worked a lot of stations including the Netherlands, France, Ukraine, Austria, Czech Republic, Ireland, Poland and Italy. The most ‘worked’ country was Germany, probably because it has a good deal more registered Lighthouse and Lightship stations than any other country.
The furthest worked HF contact was in Japan with callsign JE7YUB which is assigned to the Fukushima Kibitan Amateur Radio Club. We made a total of just over 300 HF contacts which were by voice on Saturday and Morse code on Sunday as this was a public open day and Morse is easier to read when there are lots of voices in the lighthouse.
This year on Saturday we had sufficient members to setup and run a second station running VHF (Very High Frequency) from the top of the Lighthouse using a 3 metre tall ‘colinear’ antenna mounted on the handrails just outside the light. VHF contacts are generally easier to make and use smaller antenna but do not usually reach as far, though as well as individual and lighthouse contacts in the UK we also reached as far as Luc ON4ZL in Belgium.
A great weekend hopefully helping to put Happisburgh Lighthouse and amateur radio on the world map – our sincere thanks for the Lighthouse teams hospitality.
David G7URP & Kevin M0UJD
Norfolk Amateur Radio Club
