Radio Station M1IOS - Islands of Scilly

Radio Station M1IOS - Islands of Scilly is an amateur radio station located on the Isles of Scilly, a group of islands off the south west United Kingdom coast.

The Isles of Scilly are designated as EU-011 in the Islands on the Air (IOTA) directory. M1IOS is the only Class A licensed Radio Station on the Islands. Radio Station M1IOS is located at 0.5 metres above sea level, on a narrow sand bar, in the centre of Hugh Town, St. Mary’s. It is in the lee of a low hill, The Garrison, to the west, which attentuates Trans-Atlantic signals. From Scilly, global two-way HF radio communications are conducted between the islands and a variety of worldwide locations, including, and for example; Australia, Japan, Brazil, Antarctica, South Africa, Zambia, Kazakhistan, Lebanon, Canada, the USA, the Caribbean, and all European Countries. Reciprocal 144Mhz communications have been conducted between Scilly and the Adriatic. The Main Station transceiver is the Yaesu FT920AFC, with narrow filters fitted. The Yaesu FT1500M is used for Main Station VHF, 144Mhz FM contacts, monitoring the marine channels, and also for accessing the UK, Irish and French 2 Metre Repeater networks. Portable operations take place from various locations around St. Mary’s and the Off-Islands. Multi-band, HF, VHF and UHF frequencies are worked using a Yaesu FT857D transceiver. Emergency, RAYNET, facilities include a Yaesu FT8900 cross-band repeater and a Kenwood TH-F7 transceivers.

Whilst RF power levels are permitted at levels up to 400 Watts, all communications are conducted at very low power, of around 50 to 100 Watts. Digital transmissions are at QRP levels, ie below 5 Watts. UHF 70cm transmissions are conducted using a vertical co-linear antenna. VHF 144MHz transmissions use two roof-space, internally mounted, fixed-heading 6 element Yagi beams. 50Mhz transmissions use a vertical ground plane antenna. 18MHz to 28Mhz transmission use a vertical co-linear antenna. 14MHz transmissions are through a dipole resonate at 14.260MHz. Contacts from 1.8MHz to 10Mhz are conducted with an inductively loaded long wire.

From St Mary's, Station M1IOS operates on the following bands and modes.
Bands: HF Bands - 1.8MHz, 3.5MHz, 7MHz, 10MHZ,18MHz, 21MHz, 24.5MHz and 28MHz.
VHF Bands - 50MHz and 144MHz. UHF - 430MHz.

Operating Modes: Upper and Lower Single Side Band (SSB) - J3E.
Morse Code with 300Hz filter (CW) - A1B Computer generated.
Slow Scan TV (SSTV) - J2F.
Radio Teletype (RTTY) - J2B.
Phase Shift Keying (PSK31) - J2D.
Narrow Band Frequency Modulation (NFM) - F3E.
Wide Band Frequency Modulation (WFM) - F3E.
Amplitude Modulation (AM) - A3E.

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