On Friday the 1st of April 2022 a group of intrepid nay foolhardy amateur radio operators ascended to the old disused airfied RAF Ramsbury in order to erect the antennas for Airfields On The Air weekend of the 2nd & 3rd of April, the weather conditions were cold & windy which made for an interesting antenna erection, but we managed it with a lot of cursing & cold fingers. Then on the Saturday, again in cold conditions, the rest of the station was put together, shelters erected, generator installed & powered up, radio gear installed, eventually the temperature warmed up, sun came out, wind dropped, so all was right with the world, &, the antennas had stayed put overnight. Propagation on the Saturday was fair into Europe & the 40m inverted V antenna worked well although the band was a bit choppy at times. Unfortunately our 300w linear amp decided it didn't like generator power & would't play ball, so we were reduced to going barefoot 100w from our Yaesu FTDX10. We decided to break the station down at 16.30 that afternoon as we can't leave anything but the antennas overnight. Sunday the 3rd started out the same as the previous day, station put together, generator fuelled up & started, coffee drunk in copious amounts as on all three days, then the sun emerged, yippee, a good day with warm temperatures from early on. The Propagation on the Sunday on 40m was pretty good inter G with litte contact into Europe, this was the exact opposite of the Saturday. At around 16.00 on Sunday we dismantled the station after having a good weekend putting RAF Ramsbury on the map so to speak. In all 143 contacts were made, broken down into 13 on 2m FM & 3 on 70cm (GB3TD local repeater) by Ken G1NCG, 8 on 10m SSB by Andrew M1CJE (his best being PY2VM in Brazil) using his own kit as part of the main station, & 119 on 40m SSB by John G1OQV, Neil 2E0OQV, Ian G4XVW & Andrew M1CJE (he also operated on 40m). We had a few fellow operators as visitors, namely Richard G4MUF, Robin G8VVY, Elwyn G8EFK, Ian G4XVW was also a visitor, but he also agreed to do a spell as operator. As I said earlier copious amounts of coffee & tea were consumed over the weekend augmented with biscuits, cakes & sausage/egg/bacon rolls to keep all ops & visitors alike fuelled up. Only by kind permission of the landowner Mr. Peter Wilson are we able to set up the station on his land, and to him we are truly thankful and appreciative.

On the 8th of May the same band of merry men again trooped up to the airfield, set up the station & generally had lots of fun. Wx was kind to us with no rain, slight warmish breeze & the big orange ball in the sky made an appearance with blue skies. Again we are there only by kind permission of the landowner Mr. Peter Wilson. We will be back again for D Day on the 6th of June.