A report by Catherine GM4FYH

Glenrothes and District Amateur Radio Club

Operating GB0SSB (Scotland’s Secret Nuclear Bunker) during International Marconi Day

22nd April 2023

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The Glenrothes and District Amateur Radio Club (GDARC) operates a station from Scotland’s ‘Secret’ Nuclear Bunker in Fife.

The Bunker callsign is GB0SSB, though we also use the club call (GM4GRC/P) for certain events.

International Marconi Day (IMD) fell on the 22nd April this year. IMD is an event during which amateur stations worldwide attempt to make contacts (QSOs) with amateur radio stations in locations strongly associated with Marconi and the early days of wireless; for example, the Needles on the Isle of Wight.

Fifteen contacts with official IMD stations is sufficient to earn a very nice certificate.

This year I was operating GB0SSB with Ron Murray 2M0DSU. Ron had arrived before me and opened the club’s camouflaged caravan on the Bunker site.

With my antenna analyser, I couldn’t get stable tuning indications on 40m so I restricted operations to 20m.

It was a cold day, with the Bunker caravan door wide open for public interaction.

Finding IMD CW (morse code) contacts on 20m was like pulling dragons teeth. I suspect the majority of stations were operating on 40m but, still, we managed to find two IMD stations calling CQ from Italy.

One of them was IY0CG, the Pope’s Summer residence at Castel Gandolfo., located about 25km south of Rome.

We chased IY0CG up and down the 20m band as he changed frequency a few times but he didn’t reply. Either they couldn’t hear us or, one likes to think, the operators were all at lunch with a nice bottle of red.

The other station was IY4FGM located at the Villa Griffone, near Bologna, where Marconi conducted all his earliest experiments in radio telegraphy. Essentially, the Villa Griffone is ‘Ground Zero’ for radio. It all began there in the late 19th Century so IY4FGM was a contact worth chasing!

I called once. Instant success!

We had a proper chat on the key with IY4FGM. Mark was operating the IY4FGM station at that time. I was using a manual pump key key of course.

With low temperatures, few visitor numbers and difficulty finding IMD contacts on 20m we shut down after three hours and called it a day. We hadn’t worked 15 stations. In numerical terms it was a shambles but that one contact was worth all the effort. It was an honour to work the Villa Griffone and a QSO I won’t forget. Thank you Mark!

As a bonus, I received a lovely email from a fellow club member, Lawrie, MM0LJA, who had listened to the whole QSO from his QTH in St. Andrews.

Hello Catherine,
I’ve been listening to (not working) Marconi stations and did hear your very interesting QSO with an Italian station, IY4FGM. on 14.03920MHz at 10.32 UTC – excellent clear signals and CW. I think that the op was Mark. Copied “from country house (?home) of marconi family nr bolona (Assume Bologna) small town called pontecchio” etc etc
…. Your report 5&6 his 5&7…. Lawrie MM0LJA

For me this was amateur radio at its best.
Catherine Waddington
GM4FYH