Story 26DX/D-003 Story from 26DX/D-003 activity. It wasn't until around 12:00 that my son and I decided to active Cranfleet island with callsign 26DX/D-003, even though I have recently visited quite a few local iWi's, I'd never been on Cranfleet, so I had concerns that access might not be straight forward with private roads, locked gates etc. Anyway I phoned Trent Valley Sailing club which has one of their boat houses on Cranfleet, I spun a yawn that myself and family wanting to visit their sailing club within the next few weeks and asked if access to the island / sailing club was open to the general public, I was told by the friendly guy on the phone even though access was possible, it was private land and not really open to the public, even though he didn't have authority to give me permission to go on the island, he said it shouldn't be too much of a problem, before I said my goodbyes I asked for his name, ( knowing his name ( Dave ) turned out to be helpful later that afternoon :-) ). Most of the radio equipment was already packed from my recent iWi activity from Ratcliffe island, so after uploading the info on the DXRC website and informing a couple of mailing lists, two large holdalls, leisure battery and bamby poles were quickly loaded in the car, I think it was around 12:30utc when we started the 30mins journey to Cranfleet island. The sat-nav navigated us to Trent lane where we carried on the Cranfleet farm, basically we had to drive down the drive way of the farm, past their front door and proceed to the old stone bridge which would take us over the water ( Cranfleet cut ) to the island. Just like Dave had told me earlier on the phone the gate was not locked, so within a few minutes we were on the island and setting up the bamby, within 15 minutes 26DX/D-003 was on the air, first station logged was 14MC06 at 13:15utc. The band had been in great shape this particular morning, even when we started the band didn't seem too bad, quite a few strong stations were around, but we had very few takers, I suppose iWi don't interest everyone, but for the first 15 to 20 minutes or so it was very hard going with only a few in the log. We'd only been active for a few minutes when Sean mentioned that a car was coming over the bridge, I tried my best not to turn around and have look, but within a few seconds a car pulled up at the side of me and a female voice said " excuse me, can I ask what you are doing ? ! ", for the next few minutes I explained that lunatics like us visit little islands and transmit on our radio and hopefully talk to friends all over the world, I quickly mentioned that I'd spoke to Dave on the phone etc etc, she quickly became friendly and basically said she didn't mind, but her husband would be visiting the sailing club later and it would be up to him if we could stay on the island, I said fine, I'd have a chat with her husband and if he wanted us to leave no problem. Within about 30 minutes or so her husband came over the bridge and he pulled up right at side of me while I worked he only mini-pileup I had all day. It was obvious his wife had already informed him we were there, he was very friendly, he basically said he / they rent the island off the farmer, he didn't mind us stopping on the island, but it was ultimately up to the farmer, if he asked us to leave, we'd have to go, I said fine and thanked him for letting us carry on. Later that afternoon a third car pulled up, this time it was a quite an unfriendly guy, I basically told him we'd spoken to 3 other people, they knew we were here, anyway he wasn't too pleased and quickly drove off, we were just happy he wasn't the farmer. The main reason we'd decided to active Cranfleet at such short notice was because the band was very busy that morning, I was hoping the band would do its normal thing of going a little quiet early afternoon, then exploding early evening, my prediction was 50% correct, the early afternoon null arrived, unfortunately the early evening explosion never arrived :). Prop was mainly to France and Poland, well they contributed to the majority in the log, Spain was coming through strong most of the time, but most were not interested, surprisingly only one station from Italy was logged, one from Germany and only two from Denmark. So with a declining band which got progressively worse, only 43 stations were logged, but it was still a very enjoyable afternoon out. That's about it really, once we went QRT, we quickly packed the stuff away and visited the other side of the island where Cranfleet lock is situated, we took a few photos to accompany the proofs which we'd collected earlier, it wasn't long before we were driving home. Thanks to all those which called in, thanks also to those which were listening for us but without luck, hopefully next time. 73 de..Darran 26DX047 and Sean. return