Stockport (IO83WJ)

On 14th May 2023 Nigel a member of the Stockport Radio Society operating a special event station in the southeast quarter of Stockport in Greater Manchester made contact via the Qatar-OSCAR 100 satellite transponder with Fernando PY2SDN in Brazil.

Stockport RS was operating the special event station to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the RAF Operation Chastise the famous ‘Bouncing Bomb’ raid of the 16th and 17th May 1943.

The transponder has an uplink on 2.4GHz and a downlink on 100GHz and was a joint project between the Qatar Satellite Company, Qatar ARS and AMSAT (Deutschland). It is on board the Es-hail-2 satellite which was launched in 2018. The satellite is in geo-stationary orbit above the equator at 26 degrees East.

Stockport like many towns in the Greater Manchester was once heavily involved in the textiles industry most notably in cotton and silk. Stockport in the late 19th century was also a major centre for the hatting industry. Today it is more reliant on service industries and light engineering.

Nigel gave his QRA locator as IO83WJ which also in the National Grid Square SJ88.