On Wednesday of last week, members of the Wick High School Radio Club – callsign: GM0WHS – had a trip down to Wick Harbour marina to visit the yacht SY Momo and her crew, Jutta and Heiko and learn about their worldwide adventures and their amateur radio operations on board.
On our way down to the yacht we all made calls to Jutta – callsign GM/DL1HXB/MM on VHF using our handheld radios. Jutta’s callsign can be split up into separate parts. DL1HXB is her callsign indicating that she is from Germany. The GM prefix means that she is calling from Scotland and the MM suffix means that she is “maritime mobile”, meaning “at sea”.
Once aboard Jutta and Heiko explained about how they got into amateur radio and how it has helped them build connections with people all over the world both from talking to them on the radio and also from meeting them in person when they reach a new port.
Jutta showed everyone how each of their radios operated. HF for worldwide communication; VHF for local; APRS for sharing their location and AIS for sharing and viewing the location of boats nearby. We then each had a go at operating the HF radio and made contacts in Germany, Lyth and Auckengill of all places! Thanks to everyone for calling in and allowing us to practise our operating skills. The German station was great but the condition of the band was very poor due to bad propagation at the time.
We were also pleased to be able to give Jutta and Heiko a tour of the Technical and Computing Science departments. As professional cabinet makers, they were very interested in seeing the industry-standard equipment used in both woodwork and metalwork. Miss Anderson and Mr Mackay both gave excellent tours of their rooms and showed examples of pupil work.
As a memory of our contacts, each of us were given a QSL card confirming our contact with DL1HXB and we also gave Jutta and Heiko a mug with our club logo and callsign.
We wish Jutta and Heiko “best 73’s” and safe travels. Hope to catch you on the bands again.
From Jacob (MM7IFL), Murray (MM7IJY), Aden (MM3DRB), Emily (MM7MPU ), Xander and Mr Aitken (MM0WIC)