Reports from entrants in the 2024 ILLW event.
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Thanks once again to all the entrants for joining in the fun of the Lighthouse Weekend and for making it another successful year.
Web links to Youtube, web sites etc.
From Ed DD5LP at Lindau on Lake Constance: https://wp.me/p3u0rP-2zO
From VE1DSS on Henry Island, Canada. Download pdf report here
From VE3IHR, Canada: Youtube clip
From Hook Head, Ireland: Youtube clip
From India: Youtube clip.
Please be patient if you have submitted a report and it is yet to appear here.Processing a report requires time to edit photos and text before uploading to the web site. Your reports are most welcome as they give us an idea about the success or otherwise of the ILLW.
From KD9FM at Eagle Bluff:
HI Kevin,
I had a wonderful time operating for this wonderful event. I made 70 contacts on mainly 20 meters SSB and and CW running 75 watts. I had many curious visitors to the Eagle Bluff Lighthouse asking and wondering what I was doing. They all supported me as did the park officials where the park was located. Eagles flew overhead which was appropriate for the Eagle Bluff Lighthouse US 0284. I am attaching a few photos.
Best Regards,
Paul Schumacher KD9FM
FROM: US0019 FIRE ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE AUGUST 17TH 2024 
W2GSB The Great South Bay Amateur Radio Club activated US0019 on August 17th 2024 We ran two stations using a triplexer to a Buddi hex beam We made over 400 contacts many other lighthouses and two light ships. We ran SSB and Cw band conditions were not the best but we had a great day at the Fire Island lighthouse. 15 members of GSBARC took part in the activation and 12 of them were operators while the others fielded questions from visitors. This was the 24th year that we activated US0019. Next year will be the 25th anniversary of the activation.
John Melfi W2HCB
From Fred Legawiec, W2LGA @ Oswego West Pierhead Lighthouse US0207 in Oswego Harbor Oswego, New York.
Set-up on Saturday Morning went very well. We set up inside the Derrick Boat near the Lighthouse. Really nice being inside this year as wind and storms have played a major role in the past here. Set up was portable station using a Yeasu FT-891, Mat30 Tuner, Signallink, .. etc. Antenna was a SF80X HF vertical on top of a homemade ground plain system. Over the station very well on both days with no major issues. We made over 120 phone contacts and 76 digital contacts. 18 lighthouses and 2 lightships. Highlights were an Australian lighthouse and a France Lighthouse!! We received many visitors and I allowed many to “work the mike” while I maintained controls. The kids had a blast and one little one even made contact with a Canadian lighthouse after calling CQ!!
Overall a very successful activation and am looking forward to MSWE and ILLW activations in 2025!!
73’s to all,
Fred Legawiec, W2LGA
Hello 
Here is my report for the ILLW 2024 from Seaton High Tower Lighthouse UK-0198 in Hartlepool England.
The area that the Lighthouse is located is currently closed off due to ongoing Building work but I managed to operate from the Marina just 200 yards away overlooking the Lighthouse.
I think this year was brilliant working quite a few Lighthouses and Lightships around the UK and Europe.
I even had Sean K8JSM Aeronautical Mobile chasing the Lighthouse flying over the Atlantic in the United Airlines B757 on 20m plus worked China and Indonesia and the USA
The radio was the Xiegu G90 10-20w with the EFHW 20.5m wire and also a 40m InV dipole
Total number of qso's was 300 from 80m to 10m about 6 hours each day
Definitely looking forward to doing the next ILLW event in 2025
Thanks go to all that made this event possible and to all the activators and chasers
73 Carl 2E0HPI/P
All logs submitted to EQSL and QRZ
Greetings to All. This 2024 was one full of enthusiasm, we celebrated our participation #15 KP3LH was different being the only Lighthouse to go on air on the Island of Puerto Rico.Days before
our participation, Storm Ernesto passed through the island and it was quite a challenge to carry out the event. But the team willing to make good radio achieved the objective. Yaesu FTDX10 HF Radio was used and an additional icom 718, an HF kenwood 440 in band 80 meter The WP4I station was carrying out qso in this band using a 80 meter 1/2 dipole. Some friends visited us and they were helping us mount the antennas. KP4JBL,WP4I,WP4FA and WP3LR using Enfedz antenna.so stay tuned for new lighthouse events in PR that are about to start as Puerto Rico Lighthouse champion ship so we hope to be liked by the amateur radio community KP3LH CQ 73!!!
NP3F
Wind Point Lighthouse US0206 WW9X
The first International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend at Wind Point went really well.
The antenna was a 40M end-fed dropped from the top railing of the tower. The railing is about 100' so the transformer was about 30' off the ground. Then the coax fed into the house through a window. The SWR was really good for 40, 20, 15 and 10 and tunable elsewhere too. We operated in the lobby where the original lens is kept. It had 110V, was visible to visitors, had WIFI and air conditioning.
I operated SSB and FT-8 for about 10 hours total over the 2 days. It was a lot harder than I expected due to the distractions of visitors and having never been on that side of a pileup before. Looking at the log, I did 135 contacts, 16 countries, 35 states, and 4 other lighthouses. With someone else logging, I probably could have done a contact a minute on 20M for hours on end. Next year I’ll arrange for someone else to deal with visitors.
I want to thank Matt AF9Q, Jeff KC9JOB, Dave NP2I, Bernie N9AZA, and Bill ZD1Z for stopping by. Especially Bill for helping me get the antenna down after I got clear to the top of the tower and forgot to disconnect the cable at the bottom. Also, Fred K9SO and Dwayne N9PYA for making contacts.
73 Mike WW9X
It was great seeing 400 entrants for this special event! Thanks for all the work and effort you put into this!
Our crew consisted of Randy Walker (K7NOJ), Dain Webster (K7SXN), Brett Burgess (KK7KAV), Tom Gildow (W7TEG) and Shawn Walker (future ham!). This was our 3rd year of participation in the ILLW. The last 2 years we activated Pt Wilson LH in Port Townsend, Washington, USA. This year we activated Gray's Harbor LH in Westport, Washington, USA (N7G). The site at Pt Wilson was great with one exception...a US Coast Guard radar that was located within 100' (30.48M) of our antennas. We relocated to Gray's Harbor which was much more RF friendly!
We had 120 contacts over the 26 hours that we operated, 7 CW/7 USB/106 FT8. Two of the SSB were done by people just stopping by and wondering what we were doing! Our sole contact with another lighthouse was in New York that wasn't even on the list! We all had a great time using 2 EFHW strung from the top of the LH. We had 2 HF radios hooked into the antennas and a third station was operated QRP from Dain's truck. I've included two pictures. One is the crew with the LH in the background and the other is a map of our contacts.
The LH is managed by volunteers from the Westport Historical Society. They were all very accommodating and saw to it that we had everything we needed to make this a fun and exciting event! We have already registered this lighthouse for next year's ILLW with the same callsign, N7G.
There was an email effort made this year to try and coordinate contacts between US lighthouses/lightships. It was partly successful but, hopefully, next year it will start earlier.
Thanks, again, and 73!
Randy Walker K7NOJ
Hello to all,
This is the after action report for the International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend 2024 for the Activation of Drepano Lighthouse (GR000) using the Special Callsign J43LH.
Drepano Lighthouse is located in KM08wi in the Western Part of Greece in Achaia about 20km east of the City of Patras and approximately 200km west of the Capital of Greece Athens. The lighthouse was built on 1880 and has a height of 9,6 meters. During the Second World War it was destroyed and was rebuild on 1945 when it became operational again. The last years the lighthouse area has become one of the most popular spots for kitesurfing in Greece due to the frequent strong wings.
The Activation team consisted of just two operators, Nikos SV3SWC, and Giorgos SV3QUP. We setup up our station outside of the lighthouse fence and managed to work about 330 stations on HF bands (20 & 15 meters) and on QO-100 satellite (all contacts were in SSB mode). We used 100W of Power and our antennas were half-wave end fed antennas for 15 & 20 M Bands. We did not have access to mains power so for the whole operation we used our cars as power source.
Highlights of the activation were the contacts with 11 other lighthouses from Europe and the visit of some fellow operators who came to visit us. SV3ICK, SV3IDD, SV3BDO, SV3AQO, SV3DCX, SV3EXP thank you very much for you visit !!!.
73 de SV3SCW & SV3QUP J43LH Operators
This is a report from Shoreham Lighthouse in the south of England, reference UK0023.
2 meters performed well bringing 21 contacts altogether. I encourage ILLW stations to set up even a modest station on VHF. People you work will tend to be local and know where your lighthouse is. They may even visit you if they are nearby. A kind local radio amateur worked me, then visited later and offered me a cold drink! If amateurs are out and about then they are far more likely to have a VHF/UHF handheld in their shirt pocket than a fully-fledged HF station!
I was visited by Martin M1MRB from the ICQ Podcast, who had travelled down specially from South London. He brought a friend with him who is currently studying for her Foundation Licence. She made several contacts on 2 meters, under supervision, as a training exercise. She did very well and enjoyed herself. This is another advantage of having a 2 meter station, as most non-licensed / newly licensed people will find it easier to listen to FM signals than SSB.
The HF station in my car consisted of my Icom IC-7300 powered by a 100Ah LifePO4 12 Volt battery. Even though I gave it a “top up” charge for a couple of hours at home on Sunday morning, it would have probably lasted the whole weekend anyway. I ran 75 Watts the whole time rather than the full 100W, just to give the battery a slightly easier time!
The antenna was a SOTAbeams linked dipole for 40-30-20 meters. I put it up as an inverted V and because the antenna was right next to the sea, 75 Watts proved more than enough power.
The antenna spent most of its time on 40 meters, apart from a brief spell on 20 meters on Saturday evening. The visit to 14MHz brought a lighthouse in Sweden (SF6B) and the best DX of all… S51LGT at the Cape Madona lighthouse in Piran (reference SI0001). This was the only lighthouse registered in Slovenia this year.
Conditions on Sunday were more “standard” and I even had a huge pileup for the last couple of hours. I closed down for this year at 1800 GMT, partly because I was getting very tired but mainly because the battery went flat in the computer I was using for logging!
I apologise if anybody tried calling me and I didn’t work them. When the pileups were in full flow, everybody was as strong as everybody else and it was really hard to pick out individual callsigns.
The final result was 177 QSOs of which 31 were lighthouses. In the order I worked them, the lighthouses were in England, France, Wales, Germany, Republic of Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Thank you to everybody who visited me. There are too many to list but you know who you are! I really hope the local club will be able to activate Shoreham Lighthouse in 2025; a club will usually manage a better result than one individual. Nevertheless I gave it my best shot, and the outcome was far better than I expected given how bad propagation could have been. I hope I did the ILLW proud.
73 from to all ILLW fans from Ed M0MNG (GB2ISL).
Team at the Carapachibey Lighthouse, Isla de la Juventud, Cuba from 00.00 UTC on 17.08.24 to 15 UTC time on 18.08.24 62 countries with 1248 stations in this first cut..... CO4RC report
Hello Kevin.
Thanks for all your work about ILLW.. This is my second LH activity, but 1st alone without team. We were only 2 OM, with IZ3KUZ.
We work all Saturday, from midnight to 6 PM. We have got RADAR METEO of Marine Military, that got noise totally in 10m & 80m band.
Used others italian bands. No problem.
Here are some photoes of our activity. Please public them.
73 de IU3EDK/LH team, see you on 2025
The ARI Genoa club station has been present at this event for 26 years, usually with the Lanterna Lighthouse Ref. IT - 005 symbol of our city.
This year we have activated another important lighthouse in Genoa, Punta Vagno Lighthouse with ref: IT 0018
Thanks to our friend lighthouse keeper Claudio, we were able to operate within the structure, completing about 500 qso of which many lighthouses.
We operated a lot in 40 meters both in voice and digital mode but also in 20 in 15 and 30 the latter very much in CW
It was as always a fun experience, a great opportunity to be together.
The team that participated is:
IZ1PKI-IZ1DFL-IK1QHU-IU1CQS-IU1PSA-IK1INW-IU1HGL-IU1HGO-IZ1KVQ-IK1ACX-IU1MPF
From W4LX
Perfect weather. Excellent band conditions. Excellent camaraderie was had by all. Over three hundred contacts were made by our Fort Myers Amateur Radio Club group who gathered at the Gasparilla Boca Grande Lighthouse in Florida - US 0270. The club callsign, W4LX, was used for this event. QSL card information can be found on the W4LX QRZ page or FMARC.net
From GB0MRS, Lighthouse UK0085, Morecambe, England.
Morecambe in NW England is lucky to have a historic lighthouse. It may only be small but it was built in 1815 by Thomas Stevenson of the famous lighthouse family. (The father of Robert Louis "Treasure Island" Stevenson. Robert's initials were incorporated into our callsign.) This was the first time that MBARS have entered the ILLW event. Following negotiations with the local council who own the land and the café owner where we would operate from, it was all go. We operated only on the Sunday due to a limited number of operators. We obtained the special event callsign of GB0MRS. Operating was to be on 40m or 20m and the QO-100 satellite. We arrived at 08:00 UTC to set up. The hf’ers got on with rigging the aerial and I got on with setting up the satellite equipment. Being on a jetty out into Morecambe Bay we caught the full effects of the wind. We had to put out barrier tape to prevent the public getting too close to the aerials. (EMF regulations.) The tape quickly got ripped to shreds! Fortunately, we had enough rope to mask off the areas. So, operating began.
QO-100 report.
I had previously tried to email all the ILLW stations in the footprint of QO-100 to see who would be around. I was expecting maybe 4 lighthouse stations. Once I had everything configured correctly, I chose a frequency and called CQ. What I got was a pile-up that I was not expecting! This was my first experience of being on the receiving end of a pile-up. I worked through the stations for the next 70 minutes. Phew! I was kept busy after lunch with one station after another but not as busy as the morning session. I worked the same lighthouse twice as they used two different callsigns. It took me a few days to recover from this experience. I only wish there were more lighthouse station using QO-100.
hf report.
The HF antenna was an inverted V dipole with a balun fed by about 50m of RG58 coax and a "Spiderbeam" mast. (We didn't extend a couple of top sections because of the high wind.) We operated on 40m and later on 20m, with 100W.
Overall, we had 106 QSO’s with 16 lighthouse contacts, roughly a 50-50 split hf and QO-100.
We had a good day and the proximity of the café to the lighthouse added to the day (and our waistlines!) We plan to have the event again next year. 73 Andrew G8TZJ.
Photos by G0RDH and G8TZJ.
Please find photo’s attached.
73 Andrew G8TZJ
(Summer in England ? - Ed)