Dear Liliane and Thijs!
Back home again. We had a fantastic radio weekend during the ILLW 2009 event. Truly amazing contacts have been made. Many lighthouses all over the world contacted us, and new friendschips have been made. The voice of lighthouse Marken has been heard worldwide. Thank you for your hospitality, friendship and assistance. Furthermore thank you for next year’s invitation! Hopefully Het Paard van Marken will be active again in The International Lighthouse and Lightship weekend 2010! We had a great time in the friendliest radio event of the year, and we sure hope to meet you both aigain!
Bas PA5BAS / Hugo PA5PHO, operators of PC6MAR/LH,
Gorinchem, august 17th, 2009

We are now QRT and start to dismantle PC6MAR/LH. A bit of a sad feeling. We had a great weekend on a remarkable location. This morning’s pile-up started around 9 o’clock after breakfast, and lasted until 13.30 because of our lunchbreak. We needed to switch operators to handle the endless list of calling stations. I’ve been a ham radio operator since 1979, been I’ve never seen a pile-up that long. Everybody was very disciplined, and many stations had to wait for hours to QSO with us. Thanks everybody for your patience, and we sure hope to meet you again next year in ILLW 2010! QSL cards will reach you through the QSL buro!
73, Bas PA5BAS

Wow, what a big pile-ups! This one lasted 4 1/2 hours, we switched ops until we had to take a break for lunch……
All morning, we experienced very good short-skip propagation within Europe, with very strong reports! Strange enough, there was a short opening to the US, and we worked Mass during the pile-up.
Wow, isn’t what HAM radio is all about?
Make sure you participate during next year’s ILLW 2010!
Best 73, Bas PA5BAS

2M vertical, 2m horizontal cloverleaf, full size rotary dipole for 20m!

A lot of stuff going om here around Het Paard van Marken!
This morning the Dutch queen Beatrix sailed past the lighthouse, in her royal yacht Groene Draeck!
(no kidding!). In the early evening there was a SAR mission, and we whitnessed a person being lifted into a rescue helicopter!

Left, Bas PA5BAS and right Hugo PA5PHO in front of the 1972 Landrover Series 3.