2024 GB0SCD Churches on the Air St Cuby's Duloe
On the weekend of the 14th and 15th of September, St Cuby’s church in Duloe was represented in the annual Churches and Chapels on the Air (CHOTA) event organised by The World Association of Christian Radio Amateurs and Listeners (WACRAL). Originally founded in 1957 as the Huddersfield South Methodist Radio Club by the Revd. Arthur W Shepherd to link Radio Amateurs around the world who share the Christian faith, the organization became WACRAL in 1978. This year 54 churches took part worldwide, of which 43 were in the UK, 9 in the USA, 1 in Germany, and 1 in Ireland.
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St Cuby’s church is a Grade 1 listed building and celebrated its 700th anniversary of dedication in 2021. It is medieval and stands on a circular mound, thought to be the site of an Iron Age fort, located at the southern edge of the village. The church dates from the 13th century but was extensively renovated in the mid-19th century.
Following a highly successful event last year, the playing field of the village school adjacent to the church was used again and four radio stations were set up by club members resident in the village and surrounding area as far afield as Kelly Bray, Saltash and Warleggan. The radio stations operated on the 40m shortwave band, using SSB and CW; on the 20m shortwave band using SSB; on the 20 and 40m bands using FT8 at different times; and on the microwave band via the QO-100 amateur geostationary satellite, using SSB, FT4 and FT8 at different times. Although surrounded by a metal mesh fence and tall trees, there was no significant effect on radio propagation, and even the satellite station was unaffected. The four stations were only operational on the Saturday, leaving the 40m SSB/CW station and the 40m FT8 station operating on the Sunday. Weather conditions were good with good propagation on both days, although a solar flare caused the sessasion of transmission at 1630 hours on the Saturday. All stations, using the special call sign GB0SCD, produced good contacts in and around Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Details of the stations and operating modes are listed in the table below. For the non-technical, SSB (Single Sideband) is a cut down version of AM used in commercial broadcasting, and FT4 and FT8 are forms of digital data signal transmission enabling short messages to be decoded from very weak signals. CW means transmission using Morse Code.
The team members comprised Alastair (M0KRR), Andy (M0ITM) and Shirley (M0WXG) from Duloe; Peter (G8BCG) from Looe; Chris (G1VNA) from Kelly Bray; Nigel (M7NGL) from Saltash and Norman (M0JQJ) from Warleggan.
Over the two days, a total of 255 contacts in 36 countries were made including 5 of the participating churches. The churches worked were; St.Martin, Lowthorpe, E.Yorks; St. Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St. Edmonds, Suffolk; All Saints, Kingston Seymour, N.Somerset; St. Ive Parish Church, St. Ive, Cornwall; Baptist Church, Shepton Mallet, Somerset.
Under the circumstances, this was very good. The log files from all stations were combined into an ADIF file that was uploaded to eQSL, QRZ and LoTW so that our contacts could have their QSOs confirmed and QSL cards exchanged electronically.
Over the weekend, we received only one visitor who was an old radio ham re-entering the hobby after a long absence. He was shown round our operations and offered information on the ‘newer’ radios.
Overall, the operation was considered a great success, as was the barbecue on Saturday, and great fun was had by all.
The table below shows the countries worked and the number of QSOs made with the frequency bands and modes. The HF bands worked were 20 and 40m and the satellite operated on the 13cm uplink and 3cm downlink.
