Fermanagh Geopark to Australia

Lough Erne Amateur Radio Club members made 40 world-wide contacts with other radio amateurs in Australia, USA and Europe, during the Geoparks Communication event (23 & 24th May).

They had a special GB2 licence for the weekend, with the suffix MAC, Marble Arch Caves. From early Saturday GB2MAC was on-air from a caravan parked on a height above the Caves building, where its antennas had a good take off – to the other side of the world in fact.

The event work party led by Club Secretary and GB2MAC licence holder, Alan Gault, own call sign GI6PYP, were Ivan Humphries, GI8WJN, Iain Gibb MI3GHY, Michael Clarke MI5MTC and Herbie Graham GI6JPO.

GB2MAC’s most distant contacts were both with Melbourne, Australia, about 10,500 miles away, early on Sunday morning. Six were USA Hams in Michigan, New York, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia and St Louis. One was in Russia. Mainland European contacts were in Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Brittany’s Molene Island, Germany, one a canal boat station, Spain, Portugal and Sicily. In all, a remarkable spread of word on Fermanagh and its international Marble Arch Global Geopark.

The Marble Arch Caves station exchanged greetings with two other Geopark stations, GB6GEO in Torquay, south west England, and EI2GEO in south east Ireland, and a variety of other radio amateurs in John O’Groats, Scotland, England and the Republic. Visitors to the station itself included a USA tourist with a radio amateur licence, visiting the Caves with Donegal family.

A Geopark is an area recognised by UNESCO to have an exceptional geological heritage. Fermanagh’s Marble Arch Caves and area around is most exceptional. Moreover, it is the first international Geopark, straddling the border into the Republic, and the only one in Northern Ireland.

2009’s European Geopark stations were to include EI2GEO in the Republic, CS8GEO in Portugal, DK0D and DD0D in Germany, GB1GEO in Scotland, GB5GEO in Wales, and GB6GEO in Cornwall, England. In the event, the Marble Arch Caves station contacted only two, England’s GB6GEO and Ireland’s EI2GEO, and did not hear any of the others.