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Before we left the St. Kilda archipelago our skipper took us on a trip around and between the magnificent and giant sea stacs. What we saw cannot be described by words. Did you know remains of 2000BC settlement activity is still visible on Bororay?

Because we were required to leave the island sooner, we had no sleeping arrangements taken care of. In the end, we managed to find a bunk in the Leverburgh bunkhouse/hostel, HI. Today (13 July 2017) we continued our trip on to the Isle of Lewis where we are currently facing rain, 11 degr C, clouds and strong winds. We decided to set up shop in the middle of nowhere where the process unfolds of tent, mast, antenna, radio gear,… Ever tried to pitch a tent in strong winds?

We will be QRV on 10MHz with 5 Watts in CW and maybe SSB. But first we need to take pictures of the 180 degree rainbow which is appearing in front of our tent window as I am writing this. We managed to tune the antenna for 10MHz Pactor operation, let’s see if this message gets received by the HB9AK Winlink RMS.

73 and Good DX, Gert ON4GS

—– At 13/07/2017 19:53 UTC the position of ON4CO & ON4GS was 58°11.16’N 007°01.37’W

Again a day with full-on sun on St. Kilda. We could not resist to take a morning hike and marvel at the beauty of this place in the Atlantic. There is also bad news, after a meeting update with our skipper, we decided we need to scramble, pack up and leave the archipelago due to weather conditions. The time window for good sailing weather is too narrow in the next days. This will be our final HF/Winlink transmission from the island. Special thanks to the wonderful people of the National Trust for Scotland and our skipper, Angus.

73 de Gert ON4GS —– At 12/07/2017 06:50 UTC the position of ON4CO & ON4GS was 57°48.72’N 008°33.93’W

Finally found the error.. apparently our automatic antenna tuner has some unknown error. Although it looks ok, I think that it eats all the power … even S9 + 20dB Signals that we receive don’t seem to hear us. We had a spare one, just installed it, so we are now able to use the vertical. Hope it works well tonight:)
Radio operation from St.Kilda is not easy. The only place that we are allowed to erect antenna’s is on the campsite. There is a reasonable take off in the direction of mainland Europe, all the rest is blocked by high mountains. Well, high… 300 some meters. High for me, I climbed one today 🙂
Jan, ON4CO
PS: The weather is not ok for Kilda… temperature looks and feels like 20 degrees or so.
:stop —– At 11/07/2017 06:50 UTC the position of ON4CO & ON4GS was 57°48.72’N 008°33.93’W

Boy, what an epic sea trip this was (10 July 2017). First Boraraigh and then Hirta doomed up over the horizon. Gannets flying in formation on a fishing trip, HI. Never seen sea stacs… Here we are at St.Kilda updating our blog over Winlink HF. Currently, CW and SSB QSO’s in the log. We need to keep monitoring WX conditions should we need to scramble sooner then anticipated.
Gert, ON4GS

I believe this was one of the rare days one could experience in the Outer Hebrides. My wife thought I was having a vacation in the Caribbean, HI. Just to be sure, today, we double checked our food stove was working well, after all the most important item we take along with us, not?

Oh… by the way, the skipper gave a green light for St. Kilda at the crack of dawn! This is happening…

Gert, ON4GS

Jan and I reached a new milestone today by arriving in Leverburgh on the island of Harris. A road trip through the magnificent valley of Glen Coe, passing the Ben Nevis, crossing the Isle of Skye brought us to yet another ferry to embark on. Peeking at the available SOTA summits got me thinking how much climbing and radio fun you can have here. It was quite special landing on the Outer Hebrides and driving through never seen scenery.

The idea is to set up our pro-verbial camp here for a day, re-group, consult latest weather forecasts, check equipment and supplies. Tomorrow, the decision will be made on whether we initiate our last stretch and sail for St. Kilda on Monday morning… Excited indeed, this can go either way!

Gert, ON4GS

Glen Coe

Isle of Skye

SOTA Summits

Island of Harris – the Atlantic

Yes, mission control, we made the overnight sea voyage from Ijmuiden in the Netherlands towards Newcastle, England. After waking up with a view on nearly flat seas, it felt comfortable knowing we travelled half-way the UK while sleeping… Well, not all of us were fully rested. Something with youngsters, noise and a lack of attenuation.

Driving up Scotland passing Edinburgh was a delight considering the superb weather conditions of today. I was amazed by the drop-dead beauty of the lochs and surrounding hills. It is a pitty we are only passing here, drawn by the elusive visit to St. Kilda. I promised myself to come back one day…

Gert, ON4GS

Today in 1 week from now we hope to set foot on Hirta.
However, the forecast does not look good. Not good at all. I do not believe for a minute that Angus will set sail with the 37 mph gusts and accompanying 3 meter waves that are currently forecasted. So we are now looking into the alternatives.
Being it the Shiant Islands or some other ‘downwind’ location. If everything else fails, I’ll guess we will have a wet and windy holiday on the Outer Hebrides.
So be it. It is what it is, it will be what it will be .

May the weather gods be with us ! Now that I think of it, I’ll send Him a text-message right away 🙂

Meanwhile I’ve finished the Go-box. We’ve opted to take both the FT817 and a FLEX-1500 with us.
Although both have only 5 Watts of output power, we believe that for ‘digital’ modes that will do. (It will have to 🙂 )
Besides, if really necessary, we can always hook-up the modems to the FT-2000. The box contains 2 battery’s 20Ah each. These are a new type of battery’s called LiFePo. They have an internal Battery Management System (BMS) which makes it much easier to charge them. Besides these two internal battery’s there is also the possibility to attach two extra external battery’s, any type. All this power is controlled by the two switches on the right hand side of the box.
The rest of the buttons and switches are mainly for Remote tuner control, Smart Remote as they tend to call it 🙂

When this message is displayed on our St. Kilda 2017 blog page, we have successfully sent an email through Airmail remotely parsed to a blog entry. This way we will be able to update our blog posts through HF Ham Radio in areas where no Cell sites or WiFi internet is available… What a great hobby!

Gert