North West Radio Camp 2026

North West Radio Camp 2026 took place at its usual location; Charity Farm, Wrightington, near Wigan, over the weekend of the 24 – 26th July. Twenty pitches were made available and the cost was set at just £30 per person – excellent value for three days. The event was well organised by the Leyland and District Amateur Radio (LADAR) group.

Four clubs were represented at this year’s North West Radio Camp; Leyland and District Amateur Radio Club, Quantum Technology Club, Central Lancs Amateur Radio Club, and Furness Amateur Radio Society. Attendees came from

Attendees had travelled far and wide to attend the camp. There were lots of local radio amateurs from West Lancashire, Leyland, etc. But we also had folk from Blackpool, Cumbria and the Llyn Peninsula in Wales.

During the event HF and VHF stations ran under the callsign GB9NWRC, which I was the NoV (Notice of Variation) holder for. In addition to this, lots of attendees ran their own low power stations under their own callsigns. A team travelled a short distance to a nearby SOTA (Summits on the Air) summit, Billinge Hill (GB/SP-017).

There were lots of different modes being used, and plenty of interesting hardware being used, at this year’s North West Radio Camp. There were also a few bits and pieces available to purchase.

G7LFC at North West Radio Camp 2026

From a personal perspective I was set up in the top corner of the field. Ali (M6COV), my long-suffering wife, and I were accommodated overnight in our compact camper van which is based around a Citroen Berlingo XL and an Amdro Boot Jump complete with a field kitchen. We’ve been using this a lot this year to get away at weekends and activate POTA (Parks on the Air) and SOTA sites throughout England and Wales.

We’ve also added a drive-away Vango Tailgate Air Hub which provides us with cover for the pull-out kitchen and a separate room for relaxing, crafting and operating the radio. This has proven to be a great asset that has protected us from the worst of this year’s weather; both the rain and wind, and the extreme sunshine we’ve enjoyed.

For this event I brought along my Xiegu G90 transceiver and Snowdonia Radio Company (SRC) HF-360 vertical HF antenna. The antenna has been with me for nearly twenty years and it continues to perform very well. There being no electricity available in the field, the system was powered using EcoFlow power stations and a solar panel.

Details of my operations

How did the operating at the North West Radio Camp go?

I did not treat this year’s North West Radio Camp as a head down and operate event, as I have in previous years. Rather it was a time to relax, operate and network. As a result, only fifty-five contacts were made over the three days. Much of early Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon were involved in setting up and tearing down. Not much evening operating was done either, as I value my sleep these days.

My friend Simon (MW0GSR/M0GSR) came up from the Llyn Peninsula, in Wales, on the Saturday to spend the day with us. He brought up a couple of internet linked gateways and worked several stations from the camp. He also worked the Wales Digital Radio Group‘s (WDRG) net in the evening.

On the Sunday I spent some time helping a friend set up their portable FT8 station. This was successful, so I hope to hear M0MZR on the air from some SOTA summits and POTA parks in the near future.

Pros and Cons

Camps like this are always about the networking, collaboration, building friendships and doing some operating. And from this perspective, the event was great.

My station did suffer some break through from other stations in the field from time to time during the Saturday. As a result, I did find it a bit difficult to operate at various times. However, it wasn’t constant throughout the day and so didn’t curtail my activities too much. I suspect that the issue was caused by somebody using a little bit too much power into a home-brew antenna. It’s understandable because everyone is in close proximity to each other, but I have been on several radio camps now and it’s not happened before and there may be ways to prevent it happening next year.

Observations and lessons learned

There will be a wash-up meeting soon, so no doubt the interference issue will be raised. There are ways to allow operators to cause minimum interruption to others. These include issuing band tokens to operators – if you have the token for that band you can transmit on it. The downside to this is in the evening when 40m and 80m are the preferred bands during the dark hours. However, for most this could work at the North West Radio Camp as the 20m, 17m and 15m bands are often open late into the evening during the summer. On other camps, we’ve also had voice and FT8 operators working on the same band without any issue if they are operating low power, say 15W max. These are all things that can be chewed over before next year’s North West Radio Camp.

North West Radio Camp Map & Logbook