Busy bands for the club's Churches on the Air station

Phil puts up the vertical antenna for Churches on the Air — Phil on the stairway to heaven

'Churches on the Air'. It sounds a bit solemn, but our station at St Lucius', Farnley Tyas, was anything but.

First came the entertaining sight of Phil, G4FSQ, streaking up a ladder to clamp a colinear to the church gutter. He'd already shinned up an oak to fix the centre point of the HF antenna.

Coax for both was carefully threaded through a church window by an acrobatic Ian, 2E0ISD. Then we were on the air with suprisingly busy bands. Forty metres buzzed with stations across Europe wishing to work this village church.

Linda hands out fruit cake to our operators — Radio? It's a piece of cake.

On two metres, one CQ on the calling channel brought an avalanche of QSOs, including one from a church in Farnley, near Otley.

Mobile and portable stations also joined the log and it was encouraging to find so much activity on a band often written off as dead.

In between all this, we had a visit from Linda, a parishioner who'd baked a fruit cake for us, and Greg, 2E0FYP, who brought a welcome bag of Fox's biscuits.

During the occasional lulls, came plenty of opportunities for chat and laughter among our operators. In all, a good day for the club – and a useful way of getting our name more widely known.